Local Installation

Test server

OpenML has a fully functional test server accessible at test.openml.org that you can use to develop against. For many cases, this is sufficient for development, and a full local installation is not required.

Backend evolution

OpenML has grown organically, since before the current ecosystem of python tools for platform building. We are currently rewriting the entire backend using state-of-the-art Python tools (e.g. FastAPI) so that the entire platform can be easily installed locally in one go. We plan this to be available early/mid 2025. Please get in touch if you want to know more or want to contribute.

Using Docker Compose

The easiest way to set up a local version of OpenML is to use Docker Compose following the instructions here (thanks to Jos van der Velde!): https://github.com/openml/openml-services.

If you run into problems, please post an issue in the same github repo.

Installation from scratch

If you want to install a local version of OpenML from scratch please follow the steps mentioned below. Note that this does not include the Kubernetes and S3 Object storage components that we use in production.

Requirements

You'll need to have the following software running: * Apache Webserver, (with the rewrite module enabled. Is installed by default, not enabled.) * MySQL Server. * PHP 5.5 or higher (comes also with Apache) Or just a XAMP (Mac), LAMP (Linux) or WAMP (Windows) package, which conveniently contains all these applications.

Databases

Next, OpenML runs on two databases, a public database with all experiment information, and a private database, with information like user accounts etc. The latest version of both databases can be downloaded here: https://docs.openml.org/resources

Obviously, the private database does not include any actual user account info.

Backend

The source code is available in the 'OpenML' repository: https://github.com/openml/OpenML

OpenML is written in PHP, and can be 'installed' by copying all files in the 'www' or 'public_html' directory of Apache.

After that, you need to provide your local paths and database accounts and passwords using the config file in: 'APACHE_WWW_DIR'/openml_OS/config/BASE_CONFIG.php.

If everything is configured correctly, OpenML should now be running.

Search Indices

If you want to run your own (separate) OpenML instance, and store your own data, you'll also want to build your own search indices to show all data on the website. The OpenML website is based on the ElasticSearch stack. To install it, follow the instructions here: http://knowm.org/how-to-set-up-the-elk-stack-elasticsearch-logstash-and-kibana/

Initialization

This script wipes all OpenML server data and rebuilds the database and search index. Replace 'openmldir' with the directory where you want OpenML to store files.

# delete data from server
sudo rm -rf /openmldir/*
mkdir /openmldir/log

# delete database
mysqladmin -u "root" -p"yourpassword" DROP openml_expdb
mysql -h localhost -u root -p"yourpassword" -e "TRUNCATE openml.file;"

# reset ES search index
echo "Deleting and recreating the ES index: "
curl -XDELETE http://localhost:9200/openml
curl -XPUT 'localhost:9200/openml?pretty' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d'
{
    "settings" : {
        "index" : {
            "number_of_shards" : 3,
            "number_of_replicas" : 2
        }
    }
}
'

# go to directory with the website source code
cd /var/www/openml.org/public_html/

# reinitiate the database
mysql -u root -p"yourpassword!" < downloads/openml_expdb.sql

# fill important columns
sudo php index.php cron install_database

# rebuild search index
sudo php index.php cron initialize_es_indices
sudo php index.php cron build_es_indices

sudo chown apache:apache /openmldir/log
sudo chown apache:apache /openmldir/log/*