FLAX Language Learning

The FLAX server download (latest version, released February 2013)

Suitible for most users. Includes everything you need to create a stand-alone FLAX website and/or host the Moodle FLAX module. It also includes two pre-built demonstration collections "The Best of Password" and "Image Guessing activity demo collection". Java Runtime Environment 1.6 or higher is required.

Note: if you install the FLAX server at the same location of a previous FLAX installation, please remove the two demo collections before running the installer (the two demo collections are located at <your-FLAX-install-directory>/web/sites/flax/collect).

For Windows

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Greenstone-FLAX25-windows.exe(265 MB)

Updated February 2013

This distribution has been tested on Windows XP/7

Java Runtime Environment 1.6 or higher is required.

To install this distribution, download the file
Double click
Go through the installation dialog, you can accept the defaults each time if you want (installation may take several minutes)

Go to: Start -> All Programs -> Greenstone-FLAX2.x, click on the item Start FLAX Server

A terminal window appears, followed by the Greenstone Server window shortly after

Click Enter Library

Another terminal window appears showing the tomcat server is running. After a short while your default browser opens and displays the FLAX home page
For MacOS

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Greenstone-FLAX25-MacOS-intel.dmg (201 MB)

Updated February 2013

This has been tested up to version Mac OSX 10.5.8

Java Runtime Environment 1.6 or higher is required.

To install this distribution, download dmg file
Double click
Find under Devices GS3-Flax (or something similar)
Inside that is GreenstoneFLAX2.x
Double click it
Go through this dialog, you can accept the defaults each time if you want

Installation may take several minutes.

Open a shell window
Go to where you installed FLAX (This is the place where at one point of the above installation process you were asked to select an installation folder, the default for Mac OS X 10.6.7 is /usr/local/FLAX)

$source gs3-setup.sh (find ant)
$ant start (start server)

Under "perl-for-building", if you see "Non-standard location of Perl found", you must edit the file /usr/local/FLAX/build.properties by uncommenting the line #perl.path=/usr/bin (i.e., removing the # in front of the line). And then restart the FLAX server by issuing the command "ant restart" as shown in the following screenshot.
For users who are using FLAX in the standalone mode, the FLAX home page can be accessed at the url http://[tomcat_server]:[tomcat_port]/greenstone3/flax. If you have accepted the defaults during the installation, it'd be http://localhost:8080/greenstone3/flax.
For GNU/Linux

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Greenstone-FLAX25-linux.bin (234 MB)

Updated February 2013

This is the recommended distribution if you're installing FLAX on any form of Unix or Linux. It has been tested under CentOS 5.8 final

Java Runtime Environment 1.6 or higher is required.

To install this distribution, download the file, make it executable if necessary (chmod +x Greenstone-FLAX2.x-linux) and run it from the command line (by typing ./Greenstone-FLAX2.x-linux)
The installation dialog appears. Go through the process, you can accept the defaults each time if you want (installation may take several minutes)
Eventually get the following window

From the command line, go to where you installed FLAX (This is the place where at one point of the above installation process you were asked to select an installation folder, the default for Red Hat is /home/[Your username]/Greenstone3)

Method 1: run gs3-server.sh (~/Greenstone3>sh gs3-server.sh)
Eventually get this window

Click Enter Library
After a short while, it should automatically open your default browser and show the FLAX home page

Method 2: using ant
~/Greenstone3>source gs3-setup.sh (find ant)
~/Greenstone3>ant start (start server)
Open your browser, go to the URL http://localhost:8080/greenstone3/flax. Here we use the default tomcat server and port number localhost:8080. Should you specify different domain name or port during the installation, type here accordingly

The Moodle FLAX module download

For Moodle

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MoodleFLAX 2.5.1

Updated May 2014

The module has been tested on Moodle 2.5.x & 2.6.x.

Extract the package to mod/

In your browser, go to your Moodle site:
Site Administration
Notifications
Upgrade

See README.txt in the distribution for details.

FLAX for developers

ff

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Install FLAX server using SVN
Updated 2 Dec 2014

You need an Subversion client (1.5 or higher) to check out the source code.

You will also need Java and Ant to run FLAX.

Your Java version should be 1.4 or higher. We recommend Sun Java. You need the SDK (development environment). Set the environment variable JAVA_HOME to be the root of your Java installation.

Ant (Apache's Java based build tool) can be downloaded from http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi. Set the environment variable ANT_HOME to be the root of your Ant installation, and make sure the Ant executables are on your PATH.

FLAX requires Ant 1.7.1 or higher.

Installing FLAX from an SVN checkout:
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Make sure an SVN executable is on your PATH.

Checkout the code:

svn co http://svn.greenstone.org/main/trunk/greenstone3

(Note, initial checkouts from SVN have a build.properties.in file. Running 'ant' will result in the build.properties file being generated from the .in file - a straight copy.)

In the greenstone3 directory, edit the build.properties file (if file not found, edit build.properties.in instead). In particular:
1) set the Tomcat server and port number (you can leave the default settings if you like).
2) find the line "with.jni=true". Comment out the line by adding a # sign at the beginning.
3) locate the line "with.gli.and.gems". Comment it out as above
4) comment out "use.gnomelib.ext=true" and remove "#" from the line "#checkout.gnomelib.ext=true"
5) remove the "#" sign from the line #checkout.imagemagick.ext=true
6) scroll further down near the end of the file, remove the "#" sign from the line #install.flax=true.
7) FLAX uses perl to build collections. If your perl is installed in a location different than /usr/bin, uncomment and/or edit the line #perl.path=/usr/bin.
8) Unless you've installed your own FLAX server, external servers will be used for things like collocation extraction, gloss generation etc. If your machine is behind firewall, look for the lines (proxy.host, proxy.port, proxy.user, and proxy.password) and fill in the proxy information.
9) For Mac OSX users, also do the following:
- (a) set JAVA_HOME
10) For Windows users, Visual Studio is used for compiling. The VCVARS32.bat script needs to be run in the command prompt. Equally important, you need a Perl installation and put it on your system path.

11) Then, run: ant prepare
The 'prepare' target will download additional code (using SVN and http), so you need to be online to run it. It will also ask you if you accept the properties set in the build.properties file before starting.

12) Then, run: ant install
The 'install' target can be run offline

The installation process will take quite a while to finish
If everything goes well, in the end you'll see something like:
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: xx minutes yy seconds
which indicates the flax server has been installed properly.

13) To start the server, run:
source gs3-setup.sh
ant start

Additional information on the installation process:

To log the output, run
ant -Dproperties.accepted=yes -logfile build.log prepare install

In the greenstone3 directory, you can run 'ant' which will give you a help message.

Running 'ant -projecthelp' gives a list of the targets that you can run - these do various things like compile the source code, start up the server etc.
mm

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Install MoodleFLAX module using Git
Updated February 2013

The module has been tested on Moodle 2.5

Acquire source code using Git
1. You need to have Git installed on your computer
2. Make sure a git executable is on your PATH.
3. cd moodle/mod
4. git clone git://github.com/flax-nzdl-org/moodle-mod_flax.git flax
Activate module on your Moodle site
1. In your browser, go to your Moodle site
2. Site Administration
3. Notifications
4. The FLAX plugin should be listed with the status 'To be installed'. Click 'Upgrade Moodle database now' to install

FLAX mobile applications

ff

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Install FLAX mobile applications using SVN

Updated 16 June 2014

This installation contains the new FLAX Android library, activity template and activities contributed by Nan Wu.
(The old activity and library can be found in the old-activities folder.)

You need an Subversion client (1.5 or higher) to check out the source code.

You will also need the Android Developer Tools (ADT) plugin for Eclipse.
ADT can be downloaded from http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/bundle.html

Installing FLAX mobile applications from an SVN checkout:
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Make sure an SVN executable is on your PATH.

Checkout the code:

svn co http://svn.greenstone.org/flax/trunk/flaxmain/flaxmobile

FLAX resources

BNC collocation database (1.4G) (unzip the file and put it into the flax_installation/web/sites/flax/collect directory. Note: flax_installation is where your FLAX system is installled.)

BNC collocation database for SVN check out (1.8G) (unzip the file and put it into the flax_installation/web/sites/flax/collect directory. Note: flax_installation is where your FLAX system is installled.)

Previous Moodle FLAX Module Releases

MoodleFLAX 2.5

(released April 2014)

(zip, 214KB)