- Quick installation guide
Before you can use CVAT, you’ll need to get it installed. The document below contains instructions for the most popular operating systems. If your system is not covered by the document it should be relatively straight forward to adapt the instructions below for other systems.
Probably you need to modify the instructions below in case you are behind a proxy server. Proxy is an advanced topic and it is not covered by the guide.
-
Open a terminal window. If you don't know how to open a terminal window on Ubuntu please read the answer.
-
Type commands below into the terminal window to install
docker
. More instructions can be found here.sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get --no-install-recommends install -y \ apt-transport-https \ ca-certificates \ curl \ gnupg-agent \ software-properties-common curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add - sudo add-apt-repository \ "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \ $(lsb_release -cs) \ stable" sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get --no-install-recommends install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io
-
Perform post-installation steps to run docker without root permissions.
sudo groupadd docker sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
Log out and log back in (or reboot) so that your group membership is re-evaluated. You can type
groups
command in a terminal window after that and check ifdocker
group is in its output. -
Install docker-compose (1.19.0 or newer). Compose is a tool for defining and running multi-container docker applications.
sudo apt-get --no-install-recommends install -y python3-pip python3-setuptools sudo python3 -m pip install setuptools docker-compose
-
Clone CVAT source code from the GitHub repository.
sudo apt-get --no-install-recommends install -y git git clone https://github.com/opencv/cvat cd cvat
-
Build docker images by default. It will take some time to download public docker image ubuntu:16.04 and install all necessary ubuntu packages to run CVAT server.
docker-compose build
-
Run docker containers. It will take some time to download public docker images like postgres:10.3-alpine, redis:4.0.5-alpine and create containers.
docker-compose up -d
-
You can register a user but by default it will not have rights even to view list of tasks. Thus you should create a superuser. A superuser can use an admin panel to assign correct groups to the user. Please use the command below:
docker exec -it cvat bash -ic 'python3 ~/manage.py createsuperuser'
Choose a username and a password for your admin account. For more information please read Django documentation.
-
Google Chrome is the only browser which is supported by CVAT. You need to install it as well. Type commands below in a terminal window:
curl https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add - sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list' sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get --no-install-recommends install -y google-chrome-stable
-
Open the installed Google Chrome browser and go to localhost:8080. Type your login/password for the superuser on the login page and press the Login button. Now you should be able to create a new annotation task. Please read the CVAT user's guide for more details.
-
Install WSL2 (Windows subsystem for Linux) refer to this official guide. WSL2 requires Windows 10, version 2004 or higher. Note: You may not have to install a Linux distribution unless needed.
-
Download and install Docker Desktop for Windows. Double-click
Docker for Windows Installer
to run the installer. More instructions can be found here. Official guide for docker WSL2 backend can be found here. Note: Check that you are specifically using WSL2 backend for Docker. -
Download and install Git for Windows. When installing the package please keep all options by default. More information about the package can be found here.
-
Download and install Google Chrome. It is the only browser which is supported by CVAT.
-
Go to windows menu, find
Git Bash
application and run it. You should see a terminal window. -
Clone CVAT source code from the GitHub repository.
git clone https://github.com/opencv/cvat cd cvat
-
Build docker images by default. It will take some time to download public docker image ubuntu:16.04 and install all necessary ubuntu packages to run CVAT server.
docker-compose build
-
Run docker containers. It will take some time to download public docker images like postgres:10.3-alpine, redis:4.0.5-alpine and create containers.
docker-compose up -d
-
You can register a user but by default it will not have rights even to view list of tasks. Thus you should create a superuser. A superuser can use an admin panel to assign correct groups to other users. Please use the command below:
winpty docker exec -it cvat bash -ic 'python3 ~/manage.py createsuperuser'
Choose a username and a password for your admin account. For more information please read Django documentation.
-
Open the installed Google Chrome browser and go to localhost:8080. Type your login/password for the superuser on the login page and press the Login button. Now you should be able to create a new annotation task. Please read the CVAT user's guide for more details.
-
Download Docker for Mac. Double-click Docker.dmg to open the installer, then drag Moby the whale to the Applications folder. Double-click Docker.app in the Applications folder to start Docker. More instructions can be found here.
-
There are several ways to install Git on a Mac. The easiest is probably to install the Xcode Command Line Tools. On Mavericks (10.9) or above you can do this simply by trying to run git from the Terminal the very first time.
git --version
If you don’t have it installed already, it will prompt you to install it. More instructions can be found here.
-
Download and install Google Chrome. It is the only browser which is supported by CVAT.
-
Open a terminal window. The terminal app is in the Utilities folder in Applications. To open it, either open your Applications folder, then open Utilities and double-click on Terminal, or press Command - spacebar to launch Spotlight and type "Terminal," then double-click the search result.
-
Clone CVAT source code from the GitHub repository.
git clone https://github.com/opencv/cvat cd cvat
-
Build docker images by default. It will take some time to download public docker image ubuntu:16.04 and install all necessary ubuntu packages to run CVAT server.
docker-compose build
-
Run docker containers. It will take some time to download public docker images like postgres:10.3-alpine, redis:4.0.5-alpine and create containers.
docker-compose up -d
-
You can register a user but by default it will not have rights even to view list of tasks. Thus you should create a superuser. A superuser can use an admin panel to assign correct groups to other users. Please use the command below:
docker exec -it cvat bash -ic 'python3 ~/manage.py createsuperuser'
Choose a username and a password for your admin account. For more information please read Django documentation.
-
Open the installed Google Chrome browser and go to localhost:8080. Type your login/password for the superuser on the login page and press the Login button. Now you should be able to create a new annotation task. Please read the CVAT user's guide for more details.
If you deploy CVAT behind a proxy and do not plan to use any of serverless functions
for automatic annotation, the exported environment variables
http_proxy
, https_proxy
and no_proxy
should be enough to build images.
Otherwise please create or edit the file ~/.docker/config.json
in the home directory of the user
which starts containers and add JSON such as the following:
{
"proxies":
{
"default":
{
"httpProxy": "http://proxy_server:port",
"httpsProxy": "http://proxy_server:port",
"noProxy": "*.test.example.com,.example2.com"
}
}
}
These environment variables are set automatically within any container. Please see the Docker documentation for more details.
# Build and run containers with Analytics component support:
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f components/analytics/docker-compose.analytics.yml up -d --build
- You have to install
nuctl
command line tool to build and deploy serverless functions. Download the latest release. - Create
cvat
project inside nuclio dashboard where you will deploy new serverless functions and deploy a couple of DL models. Commands below should be run only after CVAT has been installed using docker-compose because it runs nuclio dashboard which manages all serverless functions.
nuctl create project cvat
nuctl deploy --project-name cvat \
--path serverless/openvino/dextr/nuclio \
--volume `pwd`/serverless/openvino/common:/opt/nuclio/common \
--platform local
nuctl deploy --project-name cvat \
--path serverless/openvino/omz/public/yolo-v3-tf/nuclio \
--volume `pwd`/serverless/openvino/common:/opt/nuclio/common \
--platform local
Note: see deploy.sh script for more examples.
The command below stops and removes containers, networks, volumes, and images
created by up
.
docker-compose down
If you want to access your instance of CVAT outside of your localhost you should
specify the CVAT_HOST
environment variable. The best way to do that is to create
docker-compose.override.yml and put
all your extra settings here.
version: "2.3"
services:
cvat_proxy:
environment:
CVAT_HOST: .example.com
Please don't forget include this file to docker-compose commands using the -f
option (in some cases it can be omitted).
You can use a share storage for data uploading during you are creating a task. To do that you can mount it to CVAT docker container. Example of docker-compose.override.yml for this purpose:
version: "2.3"
services:
cvat:
environment:
CVAT_SHARE_URL: "Mounted from /mnt/share host directory"
volumes:
- cvat_share:/home/django/share:ro
volumes:
cvat_share:
driver_opts:
type: none
device: /mnt/share
o: bind
You can change the share device path to your actual share. For user convenience we have defined the environment variable $CVAT_SHARE_URL. This variable contains a text (url for example) which is shown in the client-share browser.
You can enable email verification for newly registered users. Specify these options in the settings file to configure Django allauth to enable email verification (ACCOUNT_EMAIL_VERIFICATION = 'mandatory'). Access is denied until the user's email address is verified.
ACCOUNT_AUTHENTICATION_METHOD = 'username'
ACCOUNT_CONFIRM_EMAIL_ON_GET = True
ACCOUNT_EMAIL_REQUIRED = True
ACCOUNT_EMAIL_VERIFICATION = 'mandatory'
# Email backend settings for Django
EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'
Also you need to configure the Django email backend to send emails. This depends on the email server you are using and is not covered in this tutorial, please see Django SMTP backend configuration for details.
We will add letsencrypt.org issued certificate to secure our server connection.
We assume that
- you have sudo access on your server machine,
- you have an IP address to use for remote access, and
- that the local CVAT installation works on your server.
If this is not the case, please complete the steps in the installation manual first.
We will go through the following sequence of steps to get CVAT over HTTPS:
- Setup containers on default 80/tcp port. Checkin and then down the containers.
- Configure Nginx to pass one of the ACME challenges - webroot.
- Create the certificate files using acme.sh.
- Reconfigure Nginx to serve over HTTPS and map CVAT to Docker Compose port 443.
1. Make the proxy listen on standard port 80 and prepare nginx for the ACME challenge via webroot method
The configuration assumes that on the docker host there will be only one instance of the CVAT site listens for incoming connections on 80 and 443 port. Also redirecting everything that does not concern renewal of certificates to the site via secure HTTPS protocol.
Let's assume the server will be at my-cvat-server.org
.
Point you shell in cvat repository directory, usually cd $HOME/cvat
:
Add the following into your docker-compose.override.yml
, replacing my-cvat-server.org
with your own IP address. This file lives in the same directory as docker-compose.yml
.
Create the required directories for letsencrypt webroot operation and acme folder passthrough.
Now restart the containers with new configurations updated in docker-compose.override.yml
# on the docker host
# this will create ~/.acme.sh directory
curl https://get.acme.sh | sh
# create a subdirs for acme-challenge webroot manually
mkdir -p $HOME/cvat/letsencrypt-webroot/.well-known/acme-challenge
# docker-compose.override.yml
version: "2.3"
services:
cvat_proxy:
environment:
CVAT_HOST: my-cvat-server.org
ports:
- "80:80"
- "443:443"
volumes:
- ./letsencrypt-webroot:/var/tmp/letsencrypt-webroot
- /root/.acme.sh:/root/.acme.sh
cvat:
environment:
ALLOWED_HOSTS: '*'
This will enable serving http://my-cvat-server.org/.well-known/acme-challenge/
route from /var/tmp/letsencrypt-webroot
directory on the container's filesystem which is bind mounted from docker host $HOME/cvat/letsencrypt-webroot
. That volume needed for issue and renewing certificates only.
Update a CVAT site proxy template $HOME/cvat/cvat_proxy/conf.d/cvat.conf.template
on docker(system) host. Site config updates from this template each time cvat_proxy
container start.
Add a location to server with server_name ${CVAT_HOST};
ahead others:
location ^~ /.well-known/acme-challenge/ {
default_type "text/plain";
root /var/tmp/letsencrypt-webroot;
}
You can use the Nginx quickstart guide for reference.
# on the docker host
docker-compose down
docker-compose up -d
Your server should still be visible (and unsecured) at http://my-cvat-server.org
but you won't see any behavior changes.
At this point your deployment is up and running, ready for run acme-challenge.
There are multiple approaches. First one is to use helper on docker host.
In a our approach
- it is easier to setup automatic certificate updates and (than it can be done in the container).
- leave certificates in safe place on docker host (protect from
docker-compose down
cleanup) - no unnecessary certificate files copying between container and host.
Prepare certificates.
Point you shell in cvat repository directory, usually cd $HOME/cvat
on docker host.
Certificate issue and updates should be on docker host in this approach.
Let’s Encrypt provides rate limits to ensure fair usage by as many people as possible. They recommend utilize their staging environment instead of the production API during testing. So first try to get a test certificate.
~/.acme.sh/acme.sh --issue --staging -d my-cvat-server.org -w $HOME/cvat/letsencrypt-webroot --debug
Debug note: nginx server logs for cvat_proxy are not saved in container. You shall see it at docker host by with:
docker logs cvat_proxy
.
If certificates is issued a successful we should test a renew:
~/.acme.sh/acme.sh --renew --force --staging -d my-cvat-server.org -w $HOME/cvat/letsencrypt-webroot --debug
If success:
- remove test certificate
- issue a production certificate
- create a cron job for user (
crontab -e
).
~/.acme.sh/acme.sh --remove -d my-cvat-server.org --debug
rm -r /root/.acme.sh/my-cvat-server.org
~/.acme.sh/acme.sh --issue -d my-cvat-server.org -w $HOME/cvat/letsencrypt-webroot --debug
~/.acme.sh/acme.sh --install-cronjob
Down the cvat_proxy container for setup https with issued certificates.
docker stop cvat_proxy
Reconfigure nginx for use certificates.
Bring the configuration file $HOME/cvat/cvat_proxy/conf.d/cvat.conf.template
to the following form:
- add location with redirect
return 301
to 80/tcp server. - change listen to
listen 443 ssl;
in main configururation server - add ssl certificates options and secure them.
Example of configuration file:
server {
listen 80;
server_name _ default;
return 404;
}
server {
listen 80;
server_name ${CVAT_HOST};
location ^~ /.well-known/acme-challenge/ {
default_type "text/plain";
root /var/tmp/letsencrypt;
}
location / {
return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}
}
server {
listen 443 ssl;
ssl_certificate /root/.acme.sh/my-cvat-server.org/my-cvat-server.org.cer;
ssl_certificate_key /root/.acme.sh/my-cvat-server.org/my-cvat-server.org.key;
ssl_trusted_certificate /root/.acme.sh/my-cvat-server.org/fullchain.cer;
# security options
ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
ssl_stapling on;
ssl_session_timeout 24h;
ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:2m;
ssl_ciphers 'ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-DSS-AES128-GCM-SHA256:kEDH+AESGCM:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-DSS-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:DHE-DSS-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:AES:CAMELLIA:DES-CBC3-SHA:!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXPORT:!DES:!RC4:!MD5:!PSK:!aECDH:!EDH-DSS-DES-CBC3-SHA:!EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:!KRB5-DES-CBC3-SHA:!3DES';
# security headers
add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN" always;
add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block" always;
add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" always;
add_header Referrer-Policy "no-referrer-when-downgrade" always;
add_header Content-Security-Policy "default-src 'self' http: https: data: blob: 'unsafe-inline'" always;
add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload" always;
server_name ${CVAT_HOST};
proxy_pass_header X-CSRFToken;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_pass_header Set-Cookie;
location ~* /api/.*|git/.*|analytics/.*|static/.*|admin(?:/(.*))?.*|documentation/.*|django-rq(?:/(.*))? {
proxy_pass http://cvat:8080;
}
location / {
proxy_pass http://cvat_ui;
}
}
Start cvat_proxy container with https enabled.
docker start cvat_proxy