Authenticated OpenRefine Server on Digital Ocean, Redux

Following on from yesterday’s recipe showing how to Running OpenRefine On Digital Ocean Under Simple Auth, here’s an even easier way that doesn’t require ssh and doesn’t require console access: just copy and paste some set-up info into a form on the Digital Ocean droplet creation page.

Every little everything helps… this link will set new users up with $100 of free credit on Digital Ocean; somewhere down the line I may get a small amount of affiliate link powered Digital Ocean credit to help keep my own server costs covered…

The Digital Ocean droplet creator has an option to add a User data start-up script when the droplet is created (docs).

This means we can provide a script that will download and install everything we need, including a file to define a service that will run OpenRefine.

Copy and paste the script in the gist that can be found here into the user data area before you create the droplet. The code will be executed once the droplet is up and running and should install the nginx proxy and the OpenRefine application. A default user (test) and password (letmein) are defined in script.

If you are trusting of the gist, you can install it more succinctly from the gist repository. You can also define your own user and password. To take this installation route, use the code that follows below in the userdata area:

Here’s the code…:

#!/bin/bash

#We can over-ride the default credentials
USER_NAME=testuser
USER_PWD=testpwd

#Get the latest version of installer script and run it

source <( curl -s https://gist.githubusercontent.com/psychemedia/f256960c112347dd410c2beec8ce05e3/raw/ )

(There should be no spaces between the less than and open bracket characters in the source command.)

For an explicit link to a particlar version of the script, go to the gist, and copy the link for the raw version of the latest file or the version you want.

Note that this route requires you to place considerable trust in the publisher of the remote installation script. Do you really trust a file with such a dodgy filename?

It will probably take two or three minutes to download and install everything, so don’t be too worried if you don’t see anything at the provided IP address immediately. Just keep refreshing the page…

The first sign of life you should see is the nginx default page…

Wait a few moments and reload the page… Next up is a holding page as the OpenRefine application is installed and the service started…

This page should automatically refresh itself every 5 seconds or so. When the service is up and running, you should get a page like this:

Click the link and you should be prompted with the the user/password authenticator challenge. Provide the username/password and you should be taken to your OpenRefine server.