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PAPERLESS-NGX(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual PAPERLESS-NGX(7) NAME paperless-ngx -- Index and archive scanned paper documents - installa- tion SYNOPSIS pkg install py311-paperless-ngx DESCRIPTION Paperless-ngx is a Django-based document management system that trans- forms physical documents into a searchable online archive. It is the successor of the original Paperless and Paperless-ng projects. It consists of multiple parts, a web UI and a couple of backend ser- vices for consuming and processing documents. This man page documents how the FreeBSD port is installed and config- ured. It assumes that the paperless-ngx package was already installed, e.g., from the FreeBSD package repo as described in "SYNOPSIS". IMPORTANT: Please note that upgrading an existing installation of deskutils/paperless needs special precautions. See "UPGRADING FROM PAPERLESS" for how to approach that. For more information about using paperless-ngx, see the official paper- less-ngx documentation (https://docs.paperless-ngx.com). The package creates a wrapper /usr/local/bin/paperless which in turn calls /usr/local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/paperless/manage.py, so whenever the official documentation mentions manage.py it should be substituted with /usr/local/bin/paperless or simply paperless. Paperless-ngx always needs to be run using the correct system user and a UTF-8 codepage. The package py311-paperless-ngx created a user paperless with the fol- lowing home directory layout, setting appropriate restrictive access permissions: /var/db/paperless home directory (only writeable by root) consume/ Consume directory writable by root, used as chroot di- rectory for sftp access (see below). input/ Input files are dropped in there to be processed by the paperless document consumer - either di- rectly or via a mechanism like sftp. data/ Contains paperless-ngx's data, including its SQLite database unless an external database like PostgreSQL or MariaDB is used. log/ This is where paperless stored its log files (on top of what the services write to syslog). media/ Directory used by paperless-ngx to store original files and thumbnails. nltkdata/ Directory containing data used for natural language processing. BACKEND SETUP Paperless needs access to a running redis instance, which can be in- stalled locally: pkg install redis service redis enable service redis start Modify /usr/local/etc/paperless.conf to match the configured creden- tials (when running on localhost, it is possible to use no special cre- dentials). In case redis is not running on localhost, an ACL entry needs to be added to grant permissions to the user used to access the instance: user paperlessusername on +@all -@admin ~* &* The URL paperless is hosted on needs to be configued by setting PAPERLESS_URL, it is also possible to tune PAPERLESS_THREADS_PER_WORKER in the same configuration file to limit the impact on system perfor- mance. Now, the database needs to be initialized. This can be accomplished by running service paperless-migrate onestart In case database migrations should be applied on every system start, paperless-migrate can be enabled to run on boot: service paperless-migrate enable Next, mandatory backend services are enabled service paperless-beat enable service paperless-consumer enable service paperless-webui enable service paperless-worker enable and subsequently started service paperless-beat start service paperless-consumer start service paperless-webui start service paperless-worker start NLTK DATA In order to process scanned documents using machine learning, paper- less-ngx requires NLTK (natural language toolkit) data. The required files can be downloaded by using these commands: su -l paperless -c '/usr/local/bin/python3.11 -m nltk.downloader \ stopwords snowball_data punkt -d /var/db/paperless/nltkdata' In case you are using py-nltk >= 3.9, you need to download punk_tab in- stead: su -l paperless -c '/usr/local/bin/python3.11 -m nltk.downloader \ stopwords snowball_data punkt_tab -d /var/db/paperless/nltkdata' Normally, the document classifier is run automatically by Celery, but it can also be initiated manually by calling su -l paperless \ -c '/usr/local/bin/paperless document_create_classifier' OPTIONAL FLOWER SERVICE paperless-ngx makes use of Celery to control a cluster of workers. There is a component called flower which can be enabled optionally to monitor the cluster. It can be enabled and started like this: service paperless-flower enable service paperless-flower start JBIG2 ENCODING In case a binary named `jbig2enc' is found in $PATH, textproc/py- ocrmypdf will automatically pick it up to encode PDFs with it. A patch to add a port skeleton for jbig2enc for manual building on a local ports tree can be found here: https://people.freebsd.org/~grembo/graphics-jbig2enc.patch There are various considerations to be made when using jbig2enc, in- cluding potential patent claims and regulatory requirements, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBIG2. WEB UI SETUP Before using the web ui, make sure to create a super user and assign a password su -l paperless -c '/usr/local/bin/paperless createsuperuser' It is recommended to host the web component using a real web server, e.g., nginx: pkg install nginx Copy-in basic server configuration: cp /usr/local/share/examples/paperless-ngx/nginx.conf \ /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf This server configuration contains TLS certificates, which need to be created by the administrator. See below for an example of how to cre- ate a self-signed certificate to get started: openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:4096 \ -keyout /usr/local/etc/nginx/selfsigned.key \ -out /usr/local/etc/nginx/selfsigned.crt Enable and start nginx: service nginx enable service nginx start The default nginx.conf can be adapted by the administrator to their needs. In case the optional flower service was enabled earlier, the commented out block in the example file can be uncommented to make flower available at /flower. It is important to properly secure a public facing web server. Doing this properly is up to the administrator. SETUP WITHOUT A WEB SERVER Even though not recommended, it is also possible to configure paperless to serve static artifacts directly. To do so, set PAPERLESS_STATICDIR=/usr/local/www/paperless-ngx/static in /usr/local/etc/paperless.conf. SFTP SETUP Setting up sftp enabled direct upload of files to be processed by the paperless consumer. Some scanners allow configuring sftp with key based authentication, which is convenient as it scans directly to the paperless processing pipeline. In case paperless is using a dedicated instance of sshd(8), access can be limited to the paperless user by adding these lines to /etc/ssh/sshd_config: # Only include if sshd is dedicated to paperless # otherwise you'll lock yourself out AllowUsers paperless The following block limits the paperless user to using the sftp(1) pro- tocol and locks it into the consume directory: # paperless can only do sftp and is dropped into correct directory Match User paperless ChrootDirectory %h/consume ForceCommand internal-sftp -u 0077 -d /input AllowTcpForwarding no X11Forwarding no PasswordAuthentication no The public keys of authorized users/devices need to be added to /var/db/paperless/.ssh/authorized_keys: mkdir -p /var/db/paperless/.ssh cat path/to/pubkey >>/var/db/paperless/.ssh/authorized_keys Make sure sshd(8) is enabled and restart (or reload) it: service sshd enable service sshd restart The user will be dropped into the correct directory, so uploading a file is as simple as: echo put file.pdf | sftp -b - paperless@host UPGRADING FROM PAPERLESS In case deskutils/paperless is installed, follow the upgrading guide at: https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/setup/#migrating-from-paperless This guide is for a docker based installation, so here a few basic hints for upgrading a FreeBSD based installation: • There need to be good and working backups before migrating • In case PGP encryption was used, files need to be decrypted first by using the existing installation of deskutils/py-paperless. See https://github.com/the-paperless-project/paperless/issues/714 for a description on how to do this and potential pitfalls. The basic idea is to comment out lines 95 and 96 in change_storage_type.py and then run: su -l paperless -c \ '/usr/local/bin/paperless change_storage_type gpg unencrypted' • Deinstall py-paperless (it might be good to keep a backup of the package). • Move the old paperless configuration file out of the way before in- stalling paperless-ngx: mv /usr/local/etc/paperless.conf \ /usr/local/etc/paperless.conf.old • Install paperless-ngx: pkg install py311-paperless-ngx • Configure /usr/local/etc/paperless.conf as described above. • Re-index documents: su -l paperless \ -c '/usr/local/bin/paperless document_index reindex' • Check if documents are okay: su -l paperless \ -c '/usr/local/bin/paperless document_sanity_checker' • In general, things should be expected to fail, so being able to re- store from backup is vital. FILES /usr/local/etc/paperless.conf See /usr/local/etc/paperless.conf.sample for an example. /usr/local/share/examples/paperless-ngx Configuration examples, complementary to this man page. SEE ALSO sftp(1), sshd_config(5), ports(7), daemon(8), service(8) https://docs.paperless-ngx.com AUTHORS This manual page was written by Michael Gmelin <grembo@FreeBSD.org>. FreeBSD ports 15.0 January 24, 2025 PAPERLESS-NGX(7)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | BACKEND SETUP | NLTK DATA | OPTIONAL FLOWER SERVICE | JBIG2 ENCODING | WEB UI SETUP | SETUP WITHOUT A WEB SERVER | SFTP SETUP | UPGRADING FROM PAPERLESS | FILES | SEE ALSO | AUTHORS
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