How to Get edX Notes Running

This is the process for getting edX notes running, both on a shared server with the LMS and other services, and on its own server. This guide assumes that you have a running LMS. While this configuration is not recommended for production deployments, this should be enough to get you started.

Step-by-step guide

In order for the edx_notes_api application to authenticate against the LMS, an oauth client configuration will need to be created in your LMS. This can be done from the Django admin application as a superuser. The admin application is hosted at https://<your-lms-url>/admin, for example, https://courses.edx.org/admin. The client details need to be available to the notes application Note that in this document, the hostname lms.example.com will be used, but this value will need to be replaced with the appropriate value for your environment.

On the admin page, to go "Oath2" and click "Add" by "Clients". Fill out the following fields.

Key
User	<leave blank>
Name	edx-notes
Url	https://<your-notesserver-url>
Redirect uri	https://<your-notesserver-url>/complete/edx-oidc/
Client id	<a big random string>
Client secret	<a DIFFERENT big random string>
Client type	Confidential (web application)

Some of these values will be needed in playbooks/roles/edx_notes_api/defaults/main.yml, so take note of them now.

You will have to use master of the configuration repository to pull in some changes related to installing notes, so fetch the latest of https://github.com/edx/configuration and change to the master branch. Here are the command (details):
```
sudo /edx/bin/update edx-platform master 
```

Set the following values in playbooks/roles/edx_notes_api/defaults.yml:

EDX_NOTES_API_MYSQL_DB_PASS: <desired password for your notes user>
EDX_NOTES_API_MYSQL_HOST: <mysql hostname>
EDX_NOTES_API_ELASTICSEARCH_URL: <url of elasticsearch cluster>
EDX_NOTES_API_DATASTORE_NAME: <desired name of mysql db and elasticsearch index, e.g. "notes">
EDX_NOTES_API_SECRET_KEY: <random string, min 50 characters recommended>
EDX_NOTES_API_CLIENT_ID: <client id from oauth config>
EDX_NOTES_API_CLIENT_SECRET: <client secret from oauth config>

You also need the following override:

EDX_NOTES_API_ALLOWED_HOSTS:
  - localhost
  - <your-lms-url>

If you have a load balancer running in front of multiple notes api servers, you might instead have to set it to the following:

EDX_NOTES_API_ALLOWED_HOSTS:
  - "*"

Also set this value in {{playbooks/roles/edxapp/defaults.yml}}:

EDXAPP_EDXNOTES_INTERFACE:
    url: http://<your-notesserver-url>/api/v1
 
FEATURES:
	ENABLE_EDXNOTES: true

Now create your database users. First, you will need to activate the venv (Python virtual environment) for ansible.
```
source /edx/app/edx_ansible/venvs/edx_ansible/bin/activate
```
Assuming that you have a local checkout of the edx configuration repository, you can create the required database users by running
```
ansible-playbook -c local  -i 'localhost,' ./run_role.yml -e 'role=edxlocal' -e@roles/edx_notes_api/defaults/main.yml
```

Install the edx-notes-api using ansible

ansible-playbook -c local  -i 'localhost,' ./notes.yml -e@/edx/app/edx_ansible/server-vars.yml

When the installation has completed verify that the notes api is healthy by running

sudo /edx/bin/supervisorctl status edx_notes_api
edx_notes_api                    RUNNING   pid 13630, uptime 11:42:01

An advanced setting in Studio must also be enabled on a per course basis. From the advanced settings tab for your course, set
Enable Student Notes to true. If you don't see that advanced setting, make sure that FEATURES.ENABLE_EDXNOTES == true
Navigate to the courseware for any course with edX Notes enabled. From the courseware you should be able to highlight text and add notes. If there are errors, check both the LMS logs, /edx/var/log/lms/edx.log, and the edx_notes_api logs, /edx/var/log/supervisor/edx_notes_apitderr.log.

How to Get edX Notes Running

Step-by-step guide

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