Here, we will discuss the process of starting your own Occam server. Regardless of whether or not you are setting up a institution-wide Occam instance or a personal server, the process is generally the same.
Occam has two core pieces: the Daemon and the Web Application. The Daemon is a background process that does all of the heavy work behind the scenes. It stores files and keeps track of metadata and generates and deploys virtual machines. The Web Application is what you are using now: a friendly interface that abstracts the common tasks and organizes your work cleanly.
Each needs to be installed separately but they will work together in the end. By default, most of the work is done. Just follow these steps and you will have a rudimentary working server in under an hour.
You can clone the Occam source code from any Occam instance, or from our centralized mirror on GitLab. By using the following command, this will install the same version being used by this server:
git clone https://archived.software/system/code occam
There is an installation script that takes care of most of the work for you, if it recognizes your operating environment. Attempt to run this script, and if it reports success, then you're done! Skip ahead to installing the Web Application.
cd occam
sh ./install.sh
Just like before, you can acquire the Occam web application (which you are using now) from the server you are currently using.
First, if you are currently in the occam directory created in the last section, then navigate back out of the occam directory (you can install the web client inside the occam directory if you wish, however.)
cd ..
By using the following command, this will pull down the same exact code currently being used by this server:
git clone https://archived.software/system/client-code occam-web
And then, just as before, there is an install script that attempts to walk you through the steps interactively if it recognizes your environment.
cd occam-web
sh ./install.sh
When these both installed, you must run both the backend and frontend separately.
First, start an Occam daemon. Navigate to the occam directory and run:
./bin/occam daemon run
Which will start an Occam daemon process on a default port.
Then, to start a web-portal, navigate to your occam‑web directory and run:
./start.sh
Which will start a server on a default port (9292), after which you can open a browser and navigate to http://localhost:9292 to visit your instance.
Setting up your server on a more permanent basis depends on your local network
and administration. However, you can find systemd and nginx scripts in the
docs directory of the occam-web codebase.