Friday, September 14, 2012

Setting up Kaltura - part IV

We have been working on getting a Kaltura Drop Folder set up.  A Drop Folder is a mechanism where an organization spools content to be ingested in a fixed location, and Kaltura polls the location, watching for content to ingest.

In our case it has taken about a month to get the Drop Folder configured, and much of this delay is preventable if you avoid the same pitfalls we did.  So in the spirit of giving back to the community, here are seven things to know when setting up a Drop Folder.

  1. Host the Drop Folder yourself, do not host it at Kaltura.
  2. Set up an account and a password on the machine, and share them with Kaltura.  To keep things very simple I created an account called 'kaltura'.
  3. Create a subdirectory under the kaltura user's home directory that will actually contain the content to be ingested.  To keep things very simple I used the name 'dropfolder'
  4. Make sure that the kaltura user owns the Drop Folder directory, and that its access controls grant appropriate rights to other users that may need to ingest content
  5. Tell Kaltura the name of the machine.  To keep things very simple I created a DNS CNAME record, kaltura.icpsr.umich.edu, that points to the right machine.
  6. Be sure you have ssh installed and running on port 22 on the machine.  If you normally do not run ssh on port 22 (we don't), don't forget to open a hole in your firewall so that Kaltura machines can reach the Drop Folder.
  7. Tell Kaltura to use sftp and port 22 to connect to your Drop Folder.  Do not try to use a port other than 22.
To re-cap the values we used:
  • Host: kaltura.icpsr.umich.edu
  • Protocol: sftp 
  • Port: TCP 22
  • Login: kaltura
  • Password: XXXXXXXX
  • Drop folder: dropfolder 
  • Drop folder UID:GID:  kaltura:met  
  • Drop folder mode: 2775
(We have a big video project called MET, and automated jobs running with the 'met' GID will need write access to the drop folder.)

You may be tempted to suggest using ssh keys or non-standard ports for ssh.  Fight those temptations.

Kaltura will offer to auto-delete content once it has been ingested.  Accept that offer.

Know that when you delete items from the Drop Folder status window in your Kaltura KMC it will also delete them from the Drop Folder.  This is not obvious, but turns out to be useful.

Now all you need are automated jobs that place content and Kaltura-style Media RSS XML into the Drop Folder.  Kaltura has some nice examples on-line, but they are somewhat trivial.  We'll post some more complex, real-world examples next week.

2 comments:

  1. Bryan - Thanks for sharing!
    We're working this setup procedures faster and easier, your feedback is certainly valuable and appreciated.

    Zohar B, Kaltura.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Zohar, I'm happy to share. I should say that overall I have been pleased with Kaltura, and the experience has been positive.

    ReplyDelete

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