Welcome to INDX.
INDX is a personal data store (PDS) that is designed for long-term secure, personal data storage. As data becomes people's most valuable asset, it has become increasingly important that they are able to keep their data safely accessible to them over the years and even decades.
We believe that giving users the power to maintain and secure the future of their data is the best way to grant people this access. People are the best informationc controllers for their own data, because they can ultimately decide and determine how and where it is stored, and to what degree it is protected - whether this data be of their family photos, their personal medical histories, bitcoin wallets, financial records, or simply important notes, web bookmarks, old receipts, and favourite quotes and bookmarks.
Putting people in control of their own data is the INDX approach.
INDX is primarily licensed free for non-commercial use under the AGPL (see COPYING for full terms of use and details). We offer licenses for commercial use on individual basis; please see contact details below.
In particular, as is the case with most AGPL programs, THIS PROGRAM IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT A WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION, OR CONSEQUENCES INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DATA LOSS, OR DAMAGE INCURRED.
That being said, we hope you do not occur any data loss or damage; as the whole point of this program is to help people store their data with minimal risk or worry.
chief data architect: Daniel A. Smith (@danielsmith-eu) lead platform design: Max Van Kleek aka eMax (@emax) engineering lead: Peter G. West
mentor/supervisors: Sir Nigel Shadbolt, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Dame Wendy Hall other contributors: Members of the SOCIAM Group, University of Southampton (see http://sociam.org)
Inspiration for this work derived from several sources; both from eMax's Ph.D. work in Personal Information Management (PIM) and Dan's Ph.D. work on linked data platforms and semantic web (SW) interfaces heavily informed the design.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee has and continues to advise on aspects of the system and protcol design. The project is managed and closely supervised by Prof. Sir Nigel Shadbolt and Prof. Dame Wendy Hall.
Install PostgreSQL, e.g. on a Mac you could use: http://postgresapp.com/
Run ./setup.sh to create a new virtualenv and install the INDX dependencies:
./setup.sh
Now, source the virtualenv:
source env/bin/activate
Now, run the INDX server with your PostgreSQL authentication username and hostname. (It will prompt for your postgresql password):
python bin/server.py <username> <hostname>
The postgresql user must have CREATEDB and CREATEROLE privileges.
The first time you run the server, you will be prompted to create a new INDX user, and supply a username and password.
If you wish to specify additional configuration, you can get the list using --help:
python bin/server.py --help
Usage will be printed:
usage: server.py [-h] [--db-host DB_HOST] [--db-port DB_PORT] [--log LOG]
[--port PORT] [--log-stdout] [--ssl] [--ssl-cert SSL_CERT]
[--ssl-key SSL_KEY] [--no-browser] [--address ADDRESS]
user hostname
Run an INDX server.
positional arguments:
user PostgreSQL server username, e.g. indx
hostname Hostname of the INDX server, e.g. indx.example.com
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--db-host DB_HOST PostgreSQL host, e.g. localhost
--db-port DB_PORT PostgreSQL port, e.g. 5432
--log LOG Location of logfile e.g. /tmp/indx.log
--port PORT Override the server listening port
--log-stdout Also log to stdout?
--ssl Turn on SSL
--ssl-cert SSL_CERT Path to SSL certificate
--ssl-key SSL_KEY Path to SSL private key
--no-browser Don't load a web browser after the server has started
--address ADDRESS Specify IP address to bind to
More installation and API documentation can be found on the INDX wiki:
https://github.com/sociam/indx/wiki
It is recommended that you set up python keyring to use OS X's keychain
mkdir ~/.local/share/python_keyring
Now create the file ~/.local/share/python_keyring/keyringrc.cfg containing:
It is recommended that you run INDX on SSL (https) instead of http for many many reasons. To do this you need a separate certificate for every indx instance you set up. If you have a proper certificate you want to use, skip this first step and proceed to the next.
You can create a self-signed certificate using the handy provided script
indx/bin/generate_cert.sh
This will create the files server.crt and server.key in your indx directory.
Then, run indx as follows:
python server.py <usernmae> <hostname> --ssl-cert <path to crt file> --ssl
If your server is running slowly, there are some ways to configure postgresql to perform better.
You need to locate your configuration file called postgresql.conf.
In OSX using the Postgres-App, this is located in:
/Users/ds/Library/Application Support/Postgres/var/postgresql.conf
Find the lines that set the values for work_mem and maintenance_work_mem, ensure they are uncommented (remove a # at the start of the line if there is one), and set them to:
work_mem = 250MB
maintenance_work_mem = 500MB
Now restart your postgres server.
IMPORTANT: If you're on OS X, doing this may exceed the maximum shared memory the kernel allows, which will be exhibited by postgres crashing on start. Fortunately you can easily fix this by tweaking your sysctl. To do this, edit or create a /etc/sysctl.conf .
Here is an example /etc/sysctl.conf that we use:
kern.sysv.shmmax=134217728
kern.sysv.shmmin=1
kern.sysv.shmmni=256
kern.sysv.shmseg=64
kern.sysv.shmall=32768
Create that file and make sure you reboot your machine.
If you have any further questions or comments, contact the INDX team at [email protected]. For enquires concerning commercial licensing, please contact [email protected].
Follow us on twitter at @indxes !