Installing Anafora Text Annotation Tool on Ubuntu Linux

As part of a project I'm currently working on we've been looking for a centralized text annotation tool that we can use. After looking at several (eHost, Brat, Semantator, Knowtator all had something that didn't meet our requirements) we found Anafora. It's pretty raw in some respects, but we were able to get it working and it seems to meet most of our requirements for now.

Since we spent a couple days working through issues I thought I'd write up a guide for how to install the tool on an Ubuntu Linux box. That has been tested on an Ubuntu Linux 14.04 EC2 instance running on Amazon Web Services utilizing Anafora version 1.0.0. We're utilizing the Apache web server.

Anafora is a Python Django web app, so it requires Python, Django and the Apache WSGI module be installed to run. The wiki document from the project was very helpful in getting this going.

Install Anafora

Create a user and install the Anafora software in the new user's home directory using the following sequence of commands. You will need to be logged in as a user with sudo permissions.

sudo useradd -m -d /home/anafora anafora
sudo passwd anafora
sudo groupadd anaforaadmin
su - anafora
wget https://github.com/weitechen/anafora/archive/v1.0.0.tar.gz
mv v1.0.0.tar.gz anafora-1.0.0.tar.gz
tar xvfz anafora-1.0.0.tar.gz
exit
sudo chgrp -R www-data /home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0
sudo chmod -R g=rwx /home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0

Install Required Dependencies

Install Apache Server, Django, `mod_wsgi`

sudo apt-get install apache2 apache2-utils python-django libapache2-mod-wsgi

Apache Server Configuration

Setup `mod_auth_digest` and create `auth_user` file with initial user anafora

sudo ln -sf /etc/apache2/mods-available/auth_digest.load /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/auth-digest.load
su - anafora
htdigest -c /home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0/anafora.htdigest anafora anafora
echo "annotatorGroup: anafora" > /home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0/anafora.authgroup

Setup /anafora location

Insert the following block inside the <VirtualHost *:80></VirtualHost> tags in the /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf file

<Location /anafora>
   AuthType Digest
   AuthName "anafora"
   AuthDigestProvider file
   AuthUserFile /home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0/anafora.htdigest
   Require valid-user
</Location>

Alias the static files and enable wsgi

In the /etc/apache2/mods-available/alias.conf file put the following inside the <IfModule alias_module></IfModule> tags.

Alias /anafora/static /home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0/src/main/static

At the end of the /etc/apache2/apache2.conf file put the following

WSGIScriptAlias /anafora /home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0/src/main/web/wsgi.py

Anafora Configuration

Setup wsgi.py file

Edit the /home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0/src/main/web/wsgi.py file. Replace all of the content with the following

import os, sys

if '/home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0/src/main' not in sys.path:
        sys.path.append('/home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0/src/main')

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'settings'

import django.core.handlers.wsgi
application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler()

Configure the settings.py file

First we have to get the settings.py file in the right place

mv /home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0/src/main/web/settings.py /home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0/src/main

Now go into the settings.py file and set the following variables to the given value

TIME_ZONE = 'America/Chicago'
STATIC_ROOT = '/home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0/src/main/static'
STATIC_URL = '/static/'
ROOT_URL = '/anafora'
SECRET_KEY = 'changeme'
TEMPLATE_DIRS = ("/home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0/src/Templates")
ANAFORA_PROJECT_FILE_ROOT = "/home/anafora/anafora-project-root"
GROUP_FILE = '/home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0/anafora.authgroup'
ADMIN_GROUPNAME = 'anaforaadmin'
ANAFORA_PROJECT_SETTING_FILENAME = ".setting.xml"

Copy the theme files

There is some problem with some of the references to static files in the pages, so we need to copy the themes directory

cp -av /home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0/src/main/static/css/themes /home/anafora/anafora-1.0.0/src/main/static

Starting up

That's it! Your installation is ready to go. You will have to create a project in the /home/anafora/anafora-project-root directory. Follow the excellent Anafora User/Administrator Manual to setup a project.

Once you have your project setup you can run apache start or apache restart as appropriate and go to http://myanaphora/anafora to get started.

I'll do a quick write up of a few operational things (like creating new users, formatting an Anafora corpus, etc) in a follow up post soon.

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Published

09 July 2014

Installing Anafora Text Annotation Tool on Ubuntu Linux Supporting tagline