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Making your own Macaulay2 web server which runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS, i.e. on the Amazon cloud)

Before you begin with AWS, install vagrant on your machine, and also get our Vagrantfile, which will be used to create the Amazon instance running the M2 web server.

There are a number of steps to set up AWS, due to the complexity of AWS. But, it really isn't so bad. Before you begin,

Here are the steps needed, current as of April 2016. The specifics might change, but it will likely be essentially the same.

  • Create a user with admin privileges, from the AWS console, click on Identity and Access Management, or try this link:

    • https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/
    • Click on Users (on left), then Create New Users.
    • After creating a user, click on Next, then Download the file. This file will be named something like credentials.csv
    • This gives you the access key id, and the secret access key. This info will be used below, when creating the Macaulay2 server.
    • Give this user admin privs: Click on Users again, then click on the new user you just created. Click on Attach Policy, and choose AdministratorAccess.

  • Create a keypair (This is a file that you will download. It is used by ssh).

    • From the AWS console, click on the EC2 button (this places you on the EC2 dashboard.
    • Click on Key Pairs (under Network and Security on the left side of the page).
    • Click on Create Key Pair. Name it, and click on Create. This downloads a file of the form keypair.pem (name will depend on what you called it) You will use this name and file below.

  • Allow the AWS machine to open the needed port.

    • On the EC2 Dashboard, click on Security Groups (under Network and Security on the left side of the page).

    • Click on default (the name of one of the security groups).

    • Click on Inbound, then Edit, towards the bottom of the page.

    • Add a new line with the following information (leave the SSH line alone, you need that to be able to access your as yet to be constructed machine instance):

      • Custom TCP Rule,
      • Protocol TCP,
      • Port Range 8002 (i.e. only one port)
      • Source: Anywhere, 0.0.0.0/0.

      Save this.

Now, back on your machine, make sure you have installed vagrant and that you have downloaded the Vagrantfile_aws mentioned above.

  • Make a folder, and place the following three files into this folder:
    • credentials.csv
    • keypair.pem
    • Vagrantfile_aws
  • Rename the file Vagrantfile_aws to Vagrantfile
  • Edit this file, changing the following information:
    • change the use of ACCESS_KEY_ID and SECRET_ACCESS_KEY to match what you have in your credentials.csv file.
    • Change KEYPAIR_NAME to the name you gave the KeyPair above (don't include the .pem part).
    • Change "PRIVATE_KEY_PATH" to e.g. "keypair.pem" (or whatever you called that file).
    • You need to set aws.region depending on the information visible on the EC2 Dashboard page. For instance, I have aws.region = "us-east-1".
    • Optional, if your region is "us-east-1": once you understand something about AWS, you might want to change the value of aws.ami and/or aws.instance_type
    • Save this file.

Now you are finally ready build the Macaulay2 Amazon instance.

  • in the same folder as these files, issue the following command: vagrant up.

    • the first time, this will take some time. Eventually, it will complete. At that point, from the EC2 Dashboard, you should have 1 Running Instances. Click on those words, and you should see your instance running (with a green light).
    • From that location, copy either the IP address or the Public DNS field. (e.g. ec2-57-152-40-220.compute-1.amazonaws.com)
    • From a browser (Chrome is best, Firefox is generally fine, Safari has problems, and Internet Explorer is not supported), go to port 8002 of that instance, e.g.: ec2-54-152-50-235.compute-1.amazonaws.com:8002 You should see a web based Macaulay2 appear!
    • Enjoy!

  • Maintenance

    • vagrant halt halts the instance on Amazon. After that, you can reboot it with vagrant up. These commands are done in the same folder you used to fo vagrant up earlier.
    • vagrant destroy destroys (terminates) the machine instance. After that, you cannot use it, and will need to do vagrant up from the beginning.
    • To manage the instance, you can ssh into that system. In the same directory on your machine do vagrant ssh. This will log you into a command line in the amazon instance.

Doing basic authorization

When you run your own Macaulay2 web server, you might prefer to require user names and passwords. We have included a simple but effective method for handling this case.

  • Create a file users.htpasswd (easiest is to place it in the folder where you placed Vagrantfile), and populate it with at least one user and encrypted password as follows:

It is fine to let all of your users use user name and one password, or you may ask your users to generate their own, and to let you know the resulting line.

  • Copy this file to the AWS instance. Assuming the IP address is 54.236.196.49, and the pem file is keypair.pem, do:

  • Restart the server using the basic authorization method:

    and then

    • ssh -i keypair.pem [email protected] 'cd InteractiveShell; npm start forever_basicAuth'