How to Install EPrints 3.4 on Ubuntu 24.04

In the academic and research world, managing digital assets is no longer optional, it is essential. Higher education institutions and research organizations require a secure, indexed, and easily accessible platform to store scholarly works, theses, dissertations, and research data. This is where an Institutional Repository plays a vital role.

What is EPrints?

EPrints is an open-source software platform specifically designed to build open-access repositories. Developed by the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, UK, EPrints has become a gold standard in digital archive management.

Fundamentally, EPrints enables institutions to collect, preserve, and disseminate their intellectual assets online. Its flexibility extends beyond research literature—EPrints can also handle complex scientific data, theses, reports, and multimedia assets. Its large global community ensures ongoing support and the continuous development of features relevant to modern academic needs.

Key Features of EPrints 3.4

Version 3.4 introduces significant improvements over previous releases, focusing on system efficiency and user experience. Key highlights include:

Flexible Workflow Management: Deposit, review, and publication processes can be customized based on institutional policies.
Advanced Indexing: Supports OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting), ensuring your repository is discoverable by academic search engines such as Google Scholar.
Responsive Design (v3.4): A more modern and mobile-friendly interface compared to older versions.
Document Preview: Allows users to preview documents directly without downloading them.
Metadata Export: Supports popular bibliographic formats (BibTeX, EndNote, MODS, etc.).

User Testimonials

The credibility of EPrints is widely recognized. Thousands of repositories worldwide use this platform.

“EPrints is the most flexible platform for our institutional repository. Its customization capabilities allow us to tailor workflows and interfaces to our university’s specific needs.” — User from the global academic community

Major institutions such as Caltech and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) are known to use EPrints for managing data archives and publications.

System Requirements & Preparation

Before starting the installation, ensure your server meets the following requirements. EPrints 3.4 heavily relies on the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl).

Server Specifications

OS: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (recommended)
RAM: Minimum 2GB (4GB recommended for production)
Disk: Based on repository storage needs

Prerequisites:

SSH access (root/sudo)
A domain or subdomain pointed (A Record) to the server IP (e.g., eprints.domain.tld)

This guide uses Ubuntu 24.04 + Apache + MySQL, following official recommendations.

Step 1: Update the System & Install Dependencies

The first step is to ensure the Ubuntu package repositories are updated and to install all Perl libraries and supporting tools required by EPrints.

Update the operating system:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y

Install dependency packages (Perl modules, Apache, image/document manipulation tools):

sudo apt install perl libncurses6 libselinux1 apache2 libapache2-mod-perl2 libxml-libxml-perl \
libunicode-string-perl libterm-readkey-perl libmime-lite-perl libmime-types-perl libdigest-sha-perl \
libdbd-mysql-perl libxml-parser-perl libxml2-dev libxml-twig-perl libarchive-any-perl libjson-perl \
liblwp-protocol-https-perl libtext-unidecode-perl lynx wget ghostscript poppler-utils antiword elinks \
texlive-base texlive-base-bin psutils imagemagick adduser tar gzip unzip libsearch-xapian-perl \
libtex-encode-perl libio-string-perl libcgi-pm-perl libdbd-mysql-perl git xpdf python3-html2text make -y

Install MySQL Server:

sudo apt install mysql-server -y

Step 2: Database Configuration

We need to create a dedicated user in MySQL so EPrints can communicate with the database.

sudo mysql

Create the eprints user with full privileges (Replace strongpassword with a secure password):

CREATE USER 'eprints'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED by 'strongpassword';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'eprints'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit

Step 3: Create System User & Apache Configuration

For security reasons, EPrints should be run by a separate system user, not root.

Create the system user eprints:

sudo useradd -d /opt/eprints3 -s /bin/bash eprints

Prepare the installation directory and set permissions:

sudo mkdir /opt/eprints3
sudo chown eprints:eprints /opt/eprints3
sudo chmod 2775 /opt/eprints3

Important: We must change the user running Apache to match the EPrints user. Edit the envvars configuration:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/envvars

Find the lines APACHE_RUN_USER and APACHE_RUN_GROUP, and change them to:

export APACHE_RUN_USER=eprints
export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=eprints

Restart Apache to apply the user change:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 4: Download & Install EPrints

Now we will download the EPrints source code directly from their official GitHub.

Switch to the eprints user:

sudo su - eprints

Clone the EPrints repository to the /opt/eprints3 directory:

git clone https://github.com/eprints/eprints3.4.git /opt/eprints3

Enter the directory and checkout the stable version 3.4.7:

cd /opt/eprints3
git checkout tags/v3.4.7

Step 5: Create Repository (Initialization)

This is the core of the installation. We will use the epadmin command to create a new repository configuration.

Run the repository creation command:

bin/epadmin create pub

Follow the interactive guide below (adjust the input with your data):

Archive ID: repository
Configure vital settings? [yes]: Press ENTER
Hostname: eprints.domain.tld (Adjust to your domain)
Webserver Port [80]: Press ENTER
Alias: Press ENTER (type # when done if prompted)
Path [/]: Press ENTER
HTTPS Hostname: eprints.domain.tld
Secure Webserver Port [443]: Press ENTER
Administrator Email: [email protected]
Archive Name: University Name Repository
Organisation Name: University/Institution Name
Write these core settings? [yes]: Press ENTER

Configure Database when prompted:

Configure database? [yes]: Press ENTER
Database Name: repository
MySQL Host [localhost]: Press ENTER
MySQL Port/Socket: Press ENTER (default)
Database User: repository (or leave default)
Database Password: Enter a random/strong password for this specific DB
Database Engine [InnoDB]: Press ENTER
Write these database settings? [yes]: Press ENTER
Create database “repository”? [yes]: Press ENTER

Enter the MySQL Superuser credentials created in Step 2:

Database Superuser Username: eprints
Database Superuser Password: Enter the ‘strongpassword’ from Step 2
Create database tables? [yes]: Press ENTER

Create an EPrints Web Administrator account (to login to the dashboard later):

Create an initial user? [yes]: Press ENTER
Username: admin
User type: admin
Password: Create a web login password
Email: [email protected]

Finalization:

Answer [yes] (ENTER) to build static web pages, import LOC subjects, and update apache config files.

Exit the eprints user:

exit

Step 6: Apache Integration

For Apache to recognize the newly created EPrints configuration, we need to include it in the global Apache configuration.

Add the include path to apache2.conf:

echo "Include /opt/eprints3/cfg/apache.conf" | sudo tee -a /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Restart Apache:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

At this point, you can access http://eprints.domain.tld, but it is still using standard HTTP.

Step 7: SSL Installation (HTTPS)

For data security and user trust, using HTTPS is mandatory. We will use Certbot (Let’s Encrypt) and a secure manual SSL configuration.

Install Certbot:

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache -y

Request SSL certificate (Use certonly mode because we will configure the vhost manually):

sudo certbot --non-interactive \
-m [email protected] \
--agree-tos \
--no-eff-email \
--apache certonly \
-d eprints.domain.tld

Configure EPrints SSL Virtual Host: Switch back to the eprints user:

sudo su - eprints

Create the directory and configuration file:

mkdir -p /opt/eprints3/archives/repository/ssl
nano /opt/eprints3/archives/repository/ssl/securevhost.conf

Paste the following configuration (this uses a strong Cipher Suite):

<VirtualHost *:443>
 ServerName eprints.domain.tld:443

 ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/eprints.domain.tld_error.log
 TransferLog /var/log/apache2/eprints.domain.tld_access.log
 LogLevel warn

 SSLEngine on
 SSLProtocol all -SSLv2 -SSLv3 -TLSv1 -TLSv1.1
 SSLHonorCipherOrder on
 SSLCipherSuite ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256

 SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/eprints.domain.tld/fullchain.pem
 SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/eprints.domain.tld/privkey.pem
 SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/eprints.domain.tld/chain.pem

 SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" \
 nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
 downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0

 CustomLog /var/log/apache2/eprints.domain.tld_access.log \
 "%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \"%r\" %b"

 Include /opt/eprints3/cfg/apache_ssl/repository.conf

 PerlTransHandler +EPrints::Apache::Rewrite
</VirtualHost>

Regenerate EPrints Apache configuration:

/opt/eprints3/bin/generate_apacheconf --system --replace

Enable SSL on Apache System: Exit to sudo user (exit), then run:

Add the EPrints SSL configuration to the global Apache config:

echo "Include /opt/eprints3/archives/repository/ssl/securevhost.conf" | sudo tee -a /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Enable SSL module and restart the service:

sudo a2enmod ssl
sudo systemctl restart apache2

SSL has been installed, and EPrints is now accessible at https://eprints.domain.tld.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully installed EPrints 3.4 on an Ubuntu 24.04 server with a secure HTTPS configuration. Your repository can now be accessed via https://eprints.domain.tld.

The next steps involve logging in as an administrator, customizing the branding (institution logo and colors), and setting up the “Divisions” structure (Faculties/Departments) to be ready for research paper deposits. With this strong open-source foundation, your institution now has full control over its digital assets.