Hello,

I am writing to inquire if there are considerations which would prevent creation of multiple instances of Galaxy by cloning a reference Galaxy installation containing a pre-configured set of tools and related assets.  Both the reference and cloned instances would reside in the same cluster, and are each built within dedicated virtual machines . A Docker based approach has yet to be attempted but the same question likely applies.

One issue that was observed in attempting this was that the Tool Shed populates the “shed_tool_data_table_conf.xml” file with absolute paths to the “.loc” files for tools installed via the Tool Shed (even though all path related variables are specified using relative paths in the respective configuration files).  Might there be other similar dependencies or constraints, including those in the database, that would disallow this clonable Galaxy installation model from being viable ? 

With regard to the Tool Shed updating files with absolute paths: Could the Toolshed be configured to use relative paths ? Else, would it be OK to update the "file path" variables within the instances created from the reference installation to reflect the instance-specific file paths ?

Thanks in advance.

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Srinivas