OpenSlides

What is OpenSlides?

OpenSlides is a free, Web-based presentation and assembly system for managing and projecting agenda, motions, and elections of assemblies. See for more information.

Installation

The main deployment method is using Docker and docker-compose. You only need to have these tools installed and no further dependencies. If you want a simpler setup or are interested in developing, please refer to development instructions.

Note: This is temporary and will be replaced with nice scripts...

First, you have to clone this repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/OpenSlides/OpenSlides.git
$ cd OpenSlides/docker/

You need to build the Docker images for the client and server with this script:

$ ./build.sh all

You must define a Django secret key in secrets/django.env, for example:

$ printf "DJANGO_SECRET_KEY='%s'\n" \
  "$(tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' < /dev/urandom | head -c 64)" > secrets/django.env

We also strongly recommend that you set a secure admin password but it is not strictly required. If you do not set an admin password, the default login credentials will be displayed on the login page. Setting the admin password:

$ cp secrets/adminsecret.env.example secrets/adminsecret.env
$ vi secrets/adminsecret.env

Afterwards, generate the configuration file:

EXTERNAL_HTTP_PORT=8000 m4 docker-compose.yml.m4 > docker-compose.yml

Finally, you can start the instance using docker-compose:

$ docker-compose up
$ # or:
$ docker-compose up -d
$ docker-compose logs
$ # ...
$ docker-compose down

More settings

When generating the docker-compose.yml, more settings can be adjusted in the docker/.env file. All changes for the backend are passed into djangos settings.py. You can find more information about most settings here. To generate the docker-compose.yml use this command:

$ ( set -a; source .env; m4 docker-stack.yml.m4 ) > docker-stack.yml

Docker Swarm Mode

OpenSlides may also be deployed in Swarm mode. Distributing instances over multiple nodes may increase performance and offer failure resistance.

An example configuration file, docker-stack.yml.m4, is provided. Unlike the Docker Compose setup, this configuration will most likely need to be customized, especially its placement constraints and database-related preferences.

Before deploying an instance on Swarm, please see Database Configuration and Backups, and review your docker-stack.yml

Database Configuration

It is fairly easy to get an OpenSlides instance up an running; however, for production setups it is strongly advised to review the database configuration.

By default, the primary database cluster will archive all WAL files in its volume. Regularly pruning old data is left up to the host system, i.e., you. Alternatively, you may disable WAL archiving by setting PGNODE_WAL_ARCHIVING=off in .env before starting the instance.

The provided docker-stack.yml.m4 file includes additional database services which can act as hot standby clusters with automatic failover functionality. To take advantage of this setup, the database services need to be configured with proper placement constraints. Before relying on this setup, please familiarize yourself with repmgr.

Backups

All important data is stored in the database. Additionally, the project directory should be included in backups to ensure a smooth recovery.

The primary database usually runs in the pgnode1 service (but see Database Configuration above). . In some cases, it may be sufficient to generate SQL dumps with pg_dump through docker exec to create backups. However, for proper incremental backups, the host system can backup the cluster's data directory and WAL archives.

The cluster's data directory is available as a volume on the host system. Additionally, the database archives its WAL files in the same volume by default. This way, the host system can include the database volume in its regular filesystem-based backup routine and create efficient database backups suitable for point-in-time recovery.

The former management repository provides the script openslides-pg-mgr.sh which can enable Postgres' backup mode in all OpenSlides database containers.

In Swarm mode, the primary database cluster may get placed on a number of nodes. It is, therefore, crucial to restrict the placement of database services to nodes on which appropriate backups have been configured.

Bugs, features and development

Feel free to open issues here on GitHub! Please use the right templates for bugs and features, and use them correctly. Pull requests are also welcome; for a general overview of the development setup refer the development instructions.

Used software

OpenSlides uses the following projects or parts of them:

• several Python packages (see server/requirements/production.txt and server/requirements/big_mode.txt)
• several JavaScript packages (see client/package.json)

License and authors

OpenSlides is Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS), and distributed under the MIT License, see LICENSE file. The authors of OpenSlides are mentioned in the AUTHORS file.