POSSE 2015 Day 2/3 OpenMRS group notes
back to POSSE 2015:
Participants

  • Dennis
  • Tom
  • Chuck
  • Ingrid
  • Stefan
  • Emily
  • Howard
  • Heidi

Karl Wurst, Professor at Worcester State University has had students working on OpenMRS. His blog includes some of his efforts:

Worcester State's blog including information on OpenMRS:


OpenMRS Developer Stages:
Possible activity: using privacy/security report (to be published (by who?)) as a motivation for a contribution
Possible activity: usability study (

  • usability study of product - can users (the students themselves) use the product? Are there opportunities for improving the interface
  • usability study of documentation
  • can the students install the product based on the documentation
  • can the students learn from available tutorial material

Possible activity: Document a bug

  • Note foss2serve activity to replicate and comment on a bug:
  • Interesting examples of conversation around resolved bugs (from Open Hatch Comes to Campus):
  • "No December":
  • "Can't Print on Tuesdays":

Ideas for Stage 3 Improvement

  • tagging of existing foss2serve activities with useful labels ("data structures", "cs1", etc.) - ability to filter on this information
  • adding a section ("mini experience report"?) to the foss2serve activity template to accommodate reflections/feedback from those who have used the activity with their students (how did it go? what would you do differently next time? how should others adjust their expectations?)
  • Add a larger "experience report" section to foss2serve for instructors to report on their classroom experiences in the large (as opposed to individual assingments).
  • organize/expand info about who is already working with OpenMRS with their students
  • half-day virtual hack day/workshop across multiple institutions
  • collaborative etherpads/titanpads/etc.
  • common IRC channel
  • offer credit on grounds of participation

How we installed OpenMRS on cs50/Harvard Virtual Box image:

  • OpenMRS Developer's Guide Manual Install instructions (starting point):
  • Documentation on cs50 image:
  • Steps followed (within cs50 VM):
  • to prevent our terminal commands from getting logged/sent back to Harvard, in terminal enter: no cs50
  • installed maven using apt-get: sudo apt-get install maven
  • updated JDK to 1.8 following these instructions:
  • sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
  • sudo apt-get update
  • sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer
  • verify that version has been updated to 1.8 with java -version
  • grab the sourcecode for OpenMRS from github; in a terminal, type: git clone
  • mvn clean install (the next specified instruction to enter in terminal) was hitting an error at openmrs-web testing, so isntead we ran mvn clean install -DskipTests=true (recommended from:
  • In Virtual Box, File -> Export Appliance...
  • Accept all default settings

How to get up and running with the OpenMRS VM that we've created:

  • Download Virtual Box so that you can load the VM:
  • Accept all default settings
  • In Virtual Box, File -> Import Appliance... and select OpenMRS.ova
  • Click Import
  • Accept all default settings
  • Select the newly imported virtual machine, then click File->Preferences (PC) or VirtualBox->Preferences (Mac), then Network, then Host-only Networks
  • If you don't see a network adapter then +/add and accept the new adapter with default settings
  • Then click Cancel/OK to accept settings
  • Note: on Windows you may already see a network adapter, it is advisable to do the following
  • Click the settings gear icon (settings for the selected VM), Network, Adapter 2, click drop-down menu next to Name:, and reselet "VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter" (this may seem odd, but you are doing great!), Click OK
  • Select the newly imported machine in the lefthand panel and click "Start" (green arrow)
  • Starting OpenMRS in the virtual machine
  • Open a terminal in the VM and type:
  • cd openmrs-core
  • cd webapp
  • mvn jetty:run
  • When you see the following in terminal window "[INFO] Starting scanner at interval of 10 seconds", then open a browser on the VM and go to: . This starts OpenMRS
  • To setup OpenMRS (in browser), you will need the mysql root username is jharvard, root password for the cs50 machine, which is "crimson"
  • To stop the jetty server, type Ctrl+C in terminal where it is running

Other installation resources (to try and create an OpenMRS VM):

  • OpenMRS Appliance (for users rather than developers?):
  • Installation with Vagrant:

Other helpful notes:

  • Importing OpenMRS sample data manually:
  • If you need to access mysql on the VM, in terminal type:
  • mysql --user=jharvard --password=crimson

Action Items for the Future:

  • add eclipse w/ maven integration to our OpenMRS VM
  • sort out issues with students' git configuration, branching, etc.