Depository — deployment wizard and installers

Depository is a document archiving and retrieval system for enterprises: a REST API, an authentication service, a background ingestion worker, a document gatherer, a digestor, the Customer Intelligence miner and a web interface, running against SQL Server or Oracle.

This package is how Depository is installed and upgraded. It contains the setup wizard, the installers for Windows and Linux, and the configuration template. The service binaries themselves come from a platform package that npm selects for you — see Platform packages below.

This is a commercial product. The package is public on npm so that installed sites can update themselves without a credentialled registry, but running Depository requires a licence.

Most sites never install this by hand

An installed Depository server updates itself. Its update script runs

npm install -g depository-deploy@<version> --include=optional

and then applies what it downloaded. If you are upgrading an existing server, use that server's update script rather than installing this package yourself — it stops the services in the right order, keeps your configuration, and restarts them.

--include=optional matters. Without it npm skips the platform package and you get the installers with no binaries behind them.

A new installation

1. Prerequisites

2. Run the wizard

npx depository-wizard

It serves a setup page on http://localhost:7474. Answer the questions and it writes a depository.conf for you.

Prefer to edit the file directly? depository.conf ships with every value commented. The full step-by-step guide is README.txt in this package — prerequisites, what each setting means, how to serve the UI under IIS, daily start/stop commands, and troubleshooting.

3. Run the installer

Windows — PowerShell, as Administrator:

cd install
.\install-windows.ps1

Linux:

cd install
sudo bash install-unix.sh

The installer creates the directories, copies the services, generates each service's configuration from depository.conf, registers and starts the services, configures nginx or Windows Services, opens the firewall ports and prints a status summary.

4. Open the web interface

Browse to the SITE_URL you configured. The first administrator account is created from the web UI, or comes from Active Directory if you enabled Windows authentication.

Installing only part of the product

A server can be given one job — most often a machine placed next to the scanners or hot folders it reads, running ingestion only:

COMPONENTS=worker,gatherer

Valid names are api, auth, worker, gatherer, digestor, intelligence, ui. Leave COMPONENTS blank to install everything, which is what a single server wants.

intelligence is the Customer Intelligence miner: installed with everything, inert until Customer Intelligence is switched on in Admin > Intelligence. An update refreshes it only where it is already installed; an existing server gets it by running the installer again.

Only a server with api creates or migrates the database, only one with auth touches the user directory, and only one with ui is given a web site. Installing one part never stops or replaces another part already on that machine.

Do not write an ingest server's configuration by hand. Generate it from the main server — the setup wizard's Export ingest package button, or the DEPOSITORY.TOOLS.SETUP tool in that server's setup/ folder. The generated file contains database passwords: move it over a trusted channel and delete it once the ingest server is running.

Upgrading a server whose settings have been changed

Every installer run rewrites each service's configuration from depository.conf. That is right for a first install, and wrong for a server whose settings have since been changed in the Administrator screens — those changes live on the server, and a plain upgrade puts them back.

KEEP_SETTINGS=true

A configuration file that is already there is then left alone; one that is missing is still written, so nothing ends up unconfigured.

Upgrading a Windows server without removing its services

Every installer run removes each Depository Windows service and registers it again. That throws away the service's Log On account, its password and its recovery settings — and where granting "Log on as a service" again needs a change request, every upgrade needs one.

UPDATE_IN_PLACE=true

A registered service is then stopped, its files replaced and started again, as the automatic update does. No database connection is made, so the database password is not needed; the API brings the database up to date when it starts. Service configuration and the IIS site, app pool and bindings are left as they are. A service that is new in this release is created as before, running as LocalSystem — the installer says so, and you set its Log On account by hand. Not for a first install, and refused together with CLEAN_DB=true. The setup wizard shows this as Update in place when it finds an installation on the server.

Your database and your stored documents are never touched by the installer.

Platform packages

The service binaries are not in this package. They are in three optional dependencies, each restricted to its own operating system so npm installs exactly one:

They are published together with this package at the same version and are not meant to be installed directly.

Configuration files inside them are sanitised at publish time: every connection string, password and token is replaced with a placeholder, any file the installer writes at run time is removed, and the publish is refused outright if a real credential survives. What reaches npm configures nothing on its own — the installer generates the real configuration from your depository.conf.

What is in this package

Read RELEASE_NOTES.html before upgrading. It states, per release, whether a database migration runs, what an upgrade changes for a site that changes nothing, and what is deliberately not in the release yet.

Air-gapped sites

Sites with no route to npm install from an offline bundle instead — the same contents as a zip, delivered through your usual channel. Ask your supplier for the bundle for the version you want; everything above applies unchanged once it is unpacked.

Keep depository.conf safe

It holds your database passwords and your JWT signing secret. Keep it readable only by the account that runs the installer, and delete any copy you moved between machines once that machine is running.

Support and licensing

Licensed commercially; this package does not grant a licence to run the product. Please raise problems through the support channel on your existing agreement, and include the version you are on from RELEASE_NOTES.html.

On Windows, diagnose-windows.bat collects the service state, ports and recent log entries into one output worth attaching. There is no Linux equivalent yet; on Linux send systemctl status 'depository-*' and journalctl -u depository-api -n 100.