Introduction: Quickstart

Overview

Senzing is delivered as a tar package intended to run on CentOS or RedHat 7.2 or higher and Debian based systems on x86_64 architecture. See the System Requirements article for up to date information.

The package can be extracted to any location, the default Senzing configuration is set to use /opt/senzing, extracting there will simplify initial setup and expedite getting started. See the notes at the bottom of this article for changing the default location.

Once the package is extracted, please review the LICENSE file. If there are any questions please contact us at [e-mail], otherwise if you agree to the terms continue on.

Supporting Media

Intro Quickstart Video

Deployment Contents

The tar package will extract to a directory called g2 containing the following structure

• bin/: Executables for miscellaneous functions
• data/: Configuration data for the core Senzing engine libraries 
• lib/: CoreSenzing engine libraries
• LICENSE: License the software is provided under
• NOTICES: 3rd party license information
• python/: Core python loading and reporting utilities that leverage the Senzing engine. Most of the work done will be in this directory tree
• README.1ST: Quickstart in text format with links to articles and help
• sdk: Samples and libraries for programmers
• setupEnv: Shell script that when sourced will setup the environment for the package to run
• sqldb/: Default SQLite database files for Senzing configuration and data stores
• viz_demo/: An HTML demonstration viewer for G2Report files

Installation Dependencies & Recommendations

You will need sudo access or help from your friendly system administrator to perform some of the installation requirements. 

If an existing user id is not already identified or you will not be using your login user, create a new user (and group if required) for use with Senzing.

• sudo useradd g2
• sudo passwd g2
• sudo usermod -aG <group_for_g2_user> g2

To use the default deployment path of /opt/senzing, create the path and change ownership to the user designated for Senzing, i.e. the g2 user. 

• sudo mkdir /opt/senzing
• sudo chown g2:g2 /opt/senzing

CentOS or RedHat 7.2 or newer 

• sudo yum install -y python python-devel python-pip
  • If you see the warning from yum 'No package python-pip available.' 
    • sudo yum -y install epel-release
    • sudo yum -y install python-pip
• sudo pip install psutil

Debian 9 or Ubuntu 16.04 (Only tested to these versions currently)

• sudo apt install -y python python-dev python-pip
• sudo pip install psutil
  

Depending on your system installation type and packages installed previously on your system, you may see errors during the install of python-pip. For Example, missing commands such as gcc. Use your distributions package installer as above to install any missing requirements e.g. sudo yum install gcc

Processing the Demo Data

Setup the environment

• Source the setupEnv script
  • cd /opt/senzing/g2 
  • source setupEnv
    

To automatically source setupEnv when the user logs in modify the users .bashrc (or similar) file.

• vi /home/<userid>/.bashrc
• Append the following to the file
  • #Senzing environment setup
    source /opt/senzing/g2/setupEnv

Load the data

• Change to the G2 python directory
  • cd /opt/senzing/g2/python
• Execute the G2 loader 
  • python G2Loader.py -P

The G2 Loader will perform a brief load of some demo data and produce status information during the load and a summary once complete.

Creating G2 report information

• Change to the python directory
  
  • cd /opt/senzing/g2/python
• Execute the G2 reporting tool 
  • python G2Report.py

G2Report populates the reporting tables and outputs a result file called g2report.g2v

Viewing the G2 Reporting and Audit Information

• In a browser, open /opt/senzing/g2/viz_demo/G2QuickView.html
  
  
• Click the Browse.. button
  
  
• Open the g2report.g2v file created in the previous step
  • This is located in the path the G2Report.py tool was executed from

NOTES

1. If the package was extracted to anything other than /opt/senzing, edit the setupEnv file and change the SENZING_ROOT variable to the location the g2 directory was extracted to.
   
   
2. If the package was extracted to anything other than /opt/senzing, edit the python/G2Module.ini and python/G2Project.ini files and change all occurrences of /opt/senzing/ to the location the g2 directory was extracted to.
   
   
3. If the package was extracted to anything other than /opt/senzing, modify the above commands to point to the extracted location instead of /opt/senzing.
   
   
4. If you used the -C flag on the tar command to extract directly to /opt/senzing and are using sudo for priveleges to /opt/senzing, you will likely find the uid and group ownership set to 505:505 and the subsequent commands will fail. In this case change the ownership of /opt/senzing to your user/group.
   
   For example:- sudo chown -R g2:g2 /opt/senzing/g2 
   
   
5. See General File or Database Not Found Errors if you encounter any errors. If they are not covered here please contact us.