Google Server Setup Guide

NOTE: This page is under construction – the setup process outlined below will be tested in August 2022

By default, MindLogger response data are end-to-end encrypted and stored on the non-profit Child Mind Institute’s AWS account. We provide instructions below for owners of MindLogger applets who need to have all response data from their applets stored on their own GCP account’s server. If this situation applies to you, please contact [email protected] before continuing with the instructions below.

Information MindLogger developers will need to set up your GCP server connection
Set up GCP server

Information MindLogger developers will need to set up your server connection

Routing encrypted data collected from the MindLogger app to your GCP server requires initial setup assistance from MindLogger developers. If you follow the instructions in this guide, you will be able to provide them with the following required information to connect your server:

GCP variables to access your MindLogger Docker container:
- MindLogger account owner email address
- Mongodb database name (if changed from “mindlogger” in steps 33 and 34)
- Database root user name (steps 33, 34, 35)
- Database root password (steps 33, 34, 35)
- Database port (if different than the default 27017)
- Public IP address for your MindLogger instance (step 22)
GCP variables to access your MindLogger Google storage bucket (for media files):
- Storage bucket name (if changed from “my-mindlogger-bucket” in step 11)
- Service account (step 23)
- Access key (step 15)
- Secret access key (step 15)

Set up GCP server

Create GCP project

Everything related to your MindLogger server should be housed within a single project. The following instructions will guide you to set up a new GCP project.

Sign in to Google Cloud Platform:
Enter “project” in the search box at top and select “Create a Project”:

Name the project and tap the blue “CREATE” button:
Tap “SELECT PROJECT” or select the new project from the dropdown menu at top:

Create GCP user role

You do not want to share information about a user with root access to your GCP account to MindLogger developers or anyone else! The following instructions will guide you to assign a role with restricted access to a new storage bucket for (optional) media files collected by your MindLogger applets.

Tap the “ADD PEOPLE TO THIS PROJECT” link in the new project’s dashboard:
Add a principal (user, in this case the owner of the account):
In the “Select a role” search box, enter “storage”:
Select “Storage Object Admin”, then tap the blue “SAVE” button:

Create GCP storage bucket

This section will guide you to create a new GCP bucket for (optional) media files collected by your MindLogger applets.

Enter “storage” in the search box at top and select “Cloud Storage”:
On the Cloud Storage page, tap the blue “CREATE BUCKET” button:

Name the bucket “my-mindlogger-bucket” and tap the blue “CREATE” button:
You will then be taken to the new bucket’s page:

Create GCP storage access keys

This section will guide you to generate access keys that you will need to share with MindLogger developers [see top].

On the Cloud Storage page, select the “INTEROPERABILITY” tab in “Settings”:
Scroll down to “Access keys for your user account” under “User Account HMAC”:

Tap the “CREATE A KEY” button to generate an Access key and Secret access key:
*** SHARE THIS INFORMATION ONLY WITH MINDLOGGER ADMINISTRATORS ***
[see top]

Create GCP instance

Your MindLogger database needs to be set up somewhere to store the response data collected by your MindLogger applets. This section will guide you to create a new GCP Debian Linux instance.

Enter “vm” in the search box at top and select “Add VM Instance”:
Tap the blue “ENABLE” button on the Compute Engine API page:
Tap the blue “CREATE INSTANCE” button on the Compute Engine page:

Name the instance:
Set the “Machine type” to “e2-micro”:
Create the instance by tapping the blue “CREATE” button:

Select the newly-created instance under “INSTANCES”:

Note: Share the External IP address with MindLogger administrators [see top]

Note: Share Service account information with MindLogger administrators [see top]

Create MindLogger database in instance

This section will guide you to create an empty MindLogger mongodb database. You will copy a Docker container with a mongodb database from a public Amazon Web Services Elastic Container Registry repository to your new GCP instance.

In the new instance page, connect to the instance by tapping “SSH”…
…and select “Open in browser window”:
You will then enter the instance console:
In the console, type the command sudo apt-get update:
To install Docker prerequisites, type the commands (see details):

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl gnupg lsb-release

sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
To install Docker, type the commands:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose-plugin
Enable the docker service at AMI boot time by typing the command:

sudo systemctl enable docker.service
Pull the public MindLogger container image from Amazon’s Elastic Container Registry:

sudo docker pull public.ecr.aws/c4l1a6f8/mindlogger:latest
- (See Appendix for how the public MindLogger container was built)
Run the image as a mindlogger container by typing the command:

sudo docker run -it -d --name mindlogger public.ecr.aws/c4l1a6f8/mindlogger

Reset database username and password

For security, you must change at least the password that accesses your database. This section will guide you to create a new user with access to your mongodb database and change relevant environment variables. You will need to share this information with MindLogger administrators.

Set environment variables (do not change once connected):
*** SHARE THIS INFORMATION ONLY WITH MINDLOGGER ADMINISTRATORS ***
[see top]

NOTE: replace new_username and new_password with new login credentials

echo "export MONGO_INITDB_DATABASE=mindlogger" >> .bashrc

echo "export MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME=new_username" >> .bashrc

echo "export MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD=new_password" >> .bashrc

source .bashrc

Reset the database username and password inside the mongodb Docker container:

NOTE: replace new_username and new_password with the new login credentials

sudo docker exec -it mindlogger bash -c mongo \
--username new_username --password new_password

At the command line prompt (>), create a new user with the new login credentials:

NOTE: replace new_username and new_password with the new login credentials

db.createUser({user: 'new_username', pwd: 'new_password', \
roles: [{ role: 'readWrite', db:'[database]'}]})
Type Ctrl-C to escape this prompt and exit to exit the console