Install and setup kemboss server

- You first need a running EMBOSS installation on Your server. On Windows You can download the mEMBOSS binary files from ftp://emboss.open-bio.org/pub/EMBOSS/windows/ and run setup.exe. On Linux You can either download the sources from ftp://emboss.open-bio.org/pub/EMBOSS/ and compile the programs yourself, or You download an EMBOSS rpm package, for example from http://software.opensuse.org/

- The kemboss server uses an SQL database to store the user data and for logging purposes. At present, only MySQL is supported. Therefore You need a MySQL (or MariaDB) server running on Your machine

- Open the MySQL command prompt by typing 'mysql -u root -p' in a terminal console. You will be asked for the MySQL root password

- Create a new SQL database user by entering:
CREATE USER 'username' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

- Create a new database and grant the created user access to this database by entering:
CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS `kemboss` ;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `kemboss` . * TO 'username';

- Type 'quit' to exit the MySQL commandline

- Install the kemboss server by either downloading a precompiled binary package or compile the server yourself

- First run the program kembossd-admin. At least You have to configure the SQL database (hostname, port, username, password). If the EMBOSS binaries are not installed in the standard directories, You also have to tell the server where to find them. Furthermore, the server could accept every user (e.g. when the server is used within an intranet) or You can restrict access to the server. You then can use the kembossd-admin program to add new users to the database

- When You have configured the SQL database and the server You can run kembossd

Security issues:

As the kemboss server executes other programs (the EMBOSS programs), there is a certain risk that someone might try to use it to also run non-EMBOSS programs on Your server. To prevent others from hacking Your server we recommend:

- Never run the kembossd as root user. This is not required by the kembossd and the EMBOSS programs can also be executed by every normal user

- The kemboss server is only allowed to run the programs that are listed in the file 'allowed_emboss_programs' (in the directory '/etc/kembossd' on Linux or the program directory on Windows). Be shure that the user executing the kemboss server only has permission to read this file but is not allowed to write to it

- On Linux, You could move the EMBOSS binaries to a new directory (e.g. '/usr/bin/EMBOSS'; on Windows, the EMBOSS binaries usually are in their own directory, e.g. 'c:\Program Files\mEMBOSS'). You then can use kembossd-admin to tell the kemboss server to only execute programs within this directory