Minimum requirements

Please note that ICA-AtoM is no longer actively supported by Artefactual Systems.
Visit https://www.accesstomemory.org for information about AtoM, the currently supported version.

Main Page > Administrator manual > Minimum requirements

PHP version

ICA-AtoM requires PHP 5.3 or higher.

PHP configuration

The default PHP configuration is sufficient for many simple websites, but due to the multimedia aspects and potential for very large datasets in ICA-AtoM, some modifications will probably need to be made to this default configuration.

See qubit:PHP script execution limits for details on PHP configuration settings that may need to be increased for ICA-AtoM to run smoothly.

ICA-AtoM functionality that is especially resource intensive and therefore most likely to exceed the default configuration limits include:

As of PHP 5.3, the session.use-only-cookies directive must be explicitly set to "0" to allow qubit:Multiple file upload

Database

ICA-AtoM is developed and tested using MySQL 5.

ICA-AtoM is built on the Symfony framework and uses the Propel object-relation mapping (ORM) framework. This should theoretically allow the use of a wide range of SQL databases (including MSSQL Server, PostgreSQL, SQLite and Oracle [1]). However, we have limited development & support resources and offer no support for DBMS' other than MySQL.

Dependencies (required)

PDO

Required for

PDO is required for all data access in ICA-AtoM, and therefore is a requirement for running ICA-AtoM.

Installation

qubit:Installing MySQL PDO

Notes

ICA-AtoM uses the PDO extension, via the Symfony framework and the Propel ORM (v1.2), to abstract calls to the DBMS layer. This abstraction allows ICA-AtoM to (theoretically) use any of a wide range of SQL databases - including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MSSQL, and others.
Although PDO communicates with many DBMSs, it uses database specific extensions to translate SQL statements. The installation instructions above are specifically for PDO-MySQL.

Multibyte string

Required for: ICA-AtoM is a multi-lingual, multi-script application; therefore it requires the PHP Multibyte String extension.
Installation: Installing mbstring
Notes: The ICA-AtoM search engine will not initialize without the mbstring extension

Other dependencies (not required)

GD PHP extension

Required for: The GD or ImageMagick extension are required for creating image derivatives (e.g. reference, thumbnail).
Installation: qubit:Installing GD
Notes: No additional notes

ImageMagick software suite

Required for

The GD or ImageMagick extension are required for creating image derivatives (e.g. reference, thumbnail).
ImageMagick additionally allows creating derivatives images from multi-page TIFFs.
ImageMagick and Ghostscript are required for creating single page and multi-page PDF derivative images.

Installation: qubit:Installing ImageMagick
Notes: If the ImageMagick suite is available it will be used preferentially over the GD library for creating image derivatives.

Ghostscript

Required for: ImageMagick and Ghostscript are required for creating single page and multi-page PDF derivative images.
Installation: qubit:Installing Ghostscript
Notes: No additional notes

FFmpeg

Required for: Creating video derivatives - including creating a flash reference video derivative for in-browser viewing.
Installation: qubit:Installing FFmpeg
Notes: The FFmpeg library allows converting a wide range of video and audio formats to the flash video format required for in-browser viewing in ICA-AtoM. It also supports creating image derivatives from the first frame of the video.

Additional NOTE

FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to access and stream audio and video. But if you are running Linux, by default it does not support MP3. Here is a workaround for Ubuntu:
- install the repo: Medibuntu
- sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
- sudo apt-get install libavcode-extra-53

XSL PHP extension

Required for: ICA-AtoM uses the PHP XSL extension for some XML import and export functions. We recommend installing XSL to enable this functionality and allow migrating data to and from ICA-AtoM.
Installation: In Ubuntu, run "sudo aptitude install php5-xsl". See also these generic instructions from PHP.net.
Notes: No additional notes