And for all labortories generally and for chemists specifically - eLabFTW, an eletronic lab book, on NS8 (testing)

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Hi all,

I’ve built an NS8 module for eLabFTW — the open-source electronic lab notebook (ELN) for keeping experiments, protocols and a lab inventory in one place.

It’s in my community repository. To try it, add the repo once:

api-cli run add-repository --data '{"name":"tebbiworld","url":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tebbiworld/ns8-repo/main/ns8/updates/","status":true,"testing":false}'

then install eLabFTW from the Software Center. (Or straight from the image: add-module Package elabftw · GitHub 1.)

What it does:

  • Runs the official elabftw/elabimg image (nginx + php-fpm) with MySQL 8.4 in one rootless pod, published on one host name through Traefik with Let’s Encrypt
  • Experiments with versioning and timestamps, plus a database for chemicals, samples and equipment, teams and templates
  • An integrated chemical structure editor (Ketcher) with substructure search, and exports as PDF, ZIP or ELN archives
  • Active Directory / LDAP login configured from the module settings — written into eLabFTW’s own configuration, with the bind password encrypted exactly as the sysadmin page does it
  • Optional RFC 3161 experiment timestamping against an external timestamp authority (my TSA module can serve as one)
  • NS8 backup with a consistent SQL dump plus uploads and exports; the restore rebuilds the database from the dump

A few things to know:

  • The first account created — whether registered locally or via an LDAP login — becomes the system administrator. Every later account waits for admin validation (eLabFTW’s own default).
  • You need a host name (FQDN) that resolves to the node for the Traefik route and Let’s Encrypt certificate.
  • LDAP/AD is optional; self-signed certificates (Samba AD, internal CAs) are accepted, and if the directory server is the node itself the container reaches it automatically via host.containers.internal.
  • The schema is installed on first start and migrated automatically on module updates.

It’s early days, so I’d really appreciate anyone giving it a spin and telling me what breaks or feels off — especially around the AD/LDAP side.

Docs: NethServer wiki (tebbiworld repository) · Source: github.com/tebbiworld/ns8-elabftw

Thanks!

Category: App · Tags: ns8