Generally, you will want to create a user account for running emen2, e.g. 'emen2.' This has the benefit of working well with the default config file. Running as any other user also works fine, you will just have to change one or two paths in config.yml.
1. Download the latest EMEN2 source code release and untar [default: /home/emen2/emen2 ]
3. Create a directory for the Database Environment, [default: /home/emen2/db ]