Frequently asked questions about fossology Installation and working

[sritasngh]

This is Frequently asked questions section. If you don't get question which you are looking for then kindly post your question here as a new comment :)

[sritasngh]

Question: How do I change my password?

[sritasngh]

Go to menu Admin, select sub menu Users, select sub menu item Edit user account.

[avinal]

Question: My uploads are not visible by others, why?

[sritasngh]

The uploads are visible per group, mostly depending on the visibility settings at upload. For each user also a per-user group is created (similar to unix / posix file systems with groups based access model). If you have selected your per-user group, where you are the only member, only you can see your uploads, clearing decisions, etc. In order to share your activities with others, please make sure that your main working group is selected. Or, at upload you can select another visibility level for this uploaded file.

[avinal]

Question: I have installed from source, but cannot reach the FOSSology application under port 8081, what is wrong?

[sritasngh]

At source install, the Apache Web server is installed on the host machine (the machine also FOSSology is installed on) and thus it needs to be called by the host, which is usually at port 80.

Port 8081 is in use by docker and vagrant installations. In this installation FOSSology runs as guest in a virtualised environmet. For these environments, port 80 of the Apache Web server in the guest machine is mapped to port 8081 on the host, so it will not interfere with any deployed http services on port 80 on the host machine.

[avinal]

Question:Sometimes the speed is very slow. It takes 10 minutes to generate the report?

[sritasngh]

Because, jobs can be scheduled only at the number of available cores, subsequent jobs are in the queue. Normally, the generation of report generation will happen after some time.

[avinal]

Question:Where can I find users table? How to drop the table?

[sritasngh]

First Connect to PostgreSQL with

psql -h localhost -d fossology -U fossy 

password: fossy.

To see the table use

\dt

Now, to drop the users table use

DROP TABLE users CASCADE;

[avinal]

Question:How can I test FOSSology without installing it every time after making changes in the source code?

[sritasngh]

The FOSSology's design requires you to install every time you make changes. But Installation can be limited to a specific scope.
For example

• You have made a change in copyright agent

make build-copyright 
sudo make install-copyright

other steps can be skipped.

• You have made changes in UI to update the PHP code

sudo make install-ui empty-cache

• You have made changes in the DB

# install everything first then run
sudo /usr/local/lib/fossology/fo-postinstall

[sritasngh]

Question: How can I change the upload file size for fosslogy server?

[kartikkumar783]

@GMishx How can I edit this file php-conf-fix.sh as i am using on docker

[kartikkumar783]

@GMishx Or How can I edit php.ini in docker container

[GMishx]

You can edit the php-conf-fix.sh in source and rebuild the Docker image. Then use it to create a new container......
You can also try docker exec to get inside the container, install vim/nano and edit the file.

[kartikkumar783]

@GMishx But I have pulled fossology through docker then how can I edit?

[GMishx]

Please have a look at above mentioned reference to docker-exec

[sritasngh]

Question: Can we customize the report generated by FOSSology?

[sritasngh]

Yes, FOSSology does not put any constraint on the generated documents.

[GMishx]

Also, most parts of the report can be configured by going to Admin then Customize and change the "Report Header Text" and other obligation fields.

Same can be done per upload by going to Conf section (link in the yellow bar while browsing an upload) and updating the Unified Report Settings tab.

[sritasngh]

Question: How can I use CLI in FOSSology?

[avinal]

There are many FOSSology CLI tools. You can upload, add jobs, check jobs, check licenses, and more right from the terminal. You can use the following small command snippet to list all the available CLI tools. Basically whatever starts with fo_ or foss will most probably be a FOSSology CLI.

ls /usr/local/bin | grep -E 'fo_|foss'

There is no existing documentation for all the tools, but you can use --help flag to list usage and available options.

sudo fossupload_status --help

In general all the CLI tools needs --username (default: fossy) and --password (default: fossy) argument to be passed.
For example, to upload a file from version control, the following command can be used:

sudo cp2foss --username fossy --password fossy -G https://github.com/fossology/fossology.git

[sritasngh]

Question: I added a new custom license and gave it a short name that included LicenseRef- Now that I generated an SPDX report, I noticed that that prefix gets added automatically, so my license now has LicenseRef-LicenseRef- which is a bit ugly (even if most likely conformant with SPDX standard still). What does it mean?

[sritasngh]

FOSSology adds the prefix automatically if the license is not a spdx license.

[sritasngh]

Question: How can I change the short name of a license?

[sritasngh]

• You need to have admin access in order to change the short name of license already in use.
• The change of license short name from the UI is not allowed.
• You need to connect to DB using

psql -h localhost -p 5432 -Ufossy -dfossology 
UPDATE license_ref SET rf_shortname='correct-name' WHERE rf_shortname='LicenseRef-license';

• The default password for DB is fossy.

[sritasngh]

Question: Is there a way that I can upload a new license from REST API ?

[sritasngh]

You can GET the endpoint meaning you can search for licenses based on their short name which returns the id, short name, full name and text. Other operations are not yet supported.

[sritasngh]

Question: What are the OS supported by FOSSology?

[sritasngh]

For now, FOSSology is not a cross-platform software system. It is best supported on Ubuntu LTS or Debian GNU.

[NicolasToussaint]

It can also be run in Docker containers.

[Aman-Codes]

Windows user's can also run Fossology software in WSL

[sritasngh]

Question: How to delete a license added accidentally?

[sritasngh]

You can't delete a license from UI but the license can be deactivated so that agents don't detect it. To do so follow:

• Go to Admin --> License admin --> Select license
• Find the license name and click on edit to mark active as NO

To delete it, you need to open the fossology database

• Then find the license in license_ref and license_candidate tables.
• You can search with column rf_shortname being the shortname or rf_fullname.
• Then delete the column by running SQL query

[QuattroN778]

Question:How do I disable an Agent?

[iamGohanHK]

Hi, I Installed fossology in my windows machine using docker WSL.
docker pull fossology/fossology
docker run -p 8081:80 fossology/fossology

but localhos:8081/repo is not showing anything

[jacknishanth07]

How do we go about creating a package name, version, and file URL, similar to the process of tagging a file for an open-source library?

[mridul45]

Hi I am unable to install fossology , everytime I try to build the project it says files missing

[shaheemazmalmmd]

@mridul45 Can you add your log ??

[mridul45]

Kindly help

[mridul45]

HI @shaheemazmalmmd Here are the logs, I am trying to run the project since 2 days.

[mridul45]

[mridul45]

[mridul45]

[mridul45]

[mridul45]

[mridul45]