Download the OpenACS 4.6 software to the /tmp directory:

Create a directory called web inside your home directory and untar the downloaded components there. Set the permissions as directed. The OpenACS 4.6 tarball is currently named openacs-4-6-release.tgz. Replace openacs-4-6-release.tgz in the commands below with whatever the current tarball is named.

joeuser:~$ mkdir -p web
joeuser:~$ chown joeuser.web web
joeuser:~$ cd web
joeuser:~/web$ tar xzf /tmp/openacs-4-6-release.tgz
joeuser:~/web$ chown -R joeuser.web openacs-4
joeuser:~/web$ chmod -R g+w openacs-4

You should now have an openacs-4/ directory tree in ~/web. Rename this directory to whatever you want your web service to be identified as. The name of your web service is referred to as the service_name. Since you can run multiple separate web services under AOLserver, this identification is used internally by AOLserver to differentiate your services from one another. A service name should be a single word, letters and numbers only. If the name of your site is one word, that would be a good choice. For example "birdnotes" might be the service name for the birdnotes.net community. We'll use birdnotes as an example in these docs.

joeuser:~/web$ ls -l
drwxrwxr-x    8 joeuser  web      4096 Nov 27 09:32 openacs-4
joeuser:~/web$ mv openacs-4 birdnotes
joeuser:~/web$ ls -l
drwxrwxr-x    8 joeuser  web      4096 Dec 20 14:37 birdnotes

Finally create a directory for the AOLserver logs.

joeuser:~/web$ mkdir birdnotes/log

Verify membership by typing groups when you login:

joeuser:~$ groups
dba web

joeuser:~$ su -      
Password: ************
root:~# adduser joeuser dba

root:~# groupadd dba
root:~# groupadd web

Connect to Oracle using svrmgrl and login:

joeuser:~$ svrmgrl

SVRMGR> connect internal
Connected.

Determine where the system tablespaces are stored:

SVRMGR>  select file_name from dba_data_files;

/ora8/m01/app/oracle/oradata/ora8/system01.dbf
/ora8/m01/app/oracle/oradata/ora8/tools01.dbf
/ora8/m01/app/oracle/oradata/ora8/rbs01.dbf
/ora8/m01/app/oracle/oradata/ora8/temp01.dbf
/ora8/m01/app/oracle/oradata/ora8/users01.dbf
/ora8/m01/app/oracle/oradata/ora8/indx01.dbf
/ora8/m01/app/oracle/oradata/ora8/drsys01.dbf

Using the above output, you should determine where to store your tablespace. As a general rule, you'll want to store your tablespace on a mount point under the /ora8 directory that is separate from the Oracle system data files. By default, the Oracle system is on m01, so we will use m02. This enables your Oracle system and database files to be on separate disks for optimized performance. For more information on such a configuration, see Chapter 12 of Philip's book. For this example, we'll use /ora8/m02/oradata/ora8/.

Create the directory for the datafile; to do this, exit from svrmgrl and login as root for this step:

SVRMGR> exit
joeuser:~$ su -
Password: ************
root:~# mkdir -p /ora8/m02/oradata/ora8/
root:~# chown joeuser.web /ora8/m02/oradata/ora8
root:~# chmod 775 /ora8/m02/oradata/ora8
root:~# exit
joeuser:~$

Create a tablespace for the service. It is important that the tablespace can autoextend. This allows the tablespace's storage capacity to grow as the size of the data grows. We set the pctincrease to be a very low value so that our extents won't grow geometrically. We do not set it to 0 at the tablespace level because this would affect Oracle's ability to automatically coalesce free space in the tablespace.

joeuser:~$ svrmgrl

SVRMGR> connect internal;
SVRMGR> create tablespace birdnotes 
             datafile '/ora8/m02/oradata/ora8/birdnotes01.dbf' 
             size 50M 
             autoextend on 
             next 10M
             maxsize 300M
             extent management local
             uniform size 32K;

Create a database user for this service. Give the user access to the tablespace and rights to connect. We'll use birdnotespassword as our password.

Write down what you specify as service_name (i.e. birdnotes) and database_password (i.e. birdnotespassword). You will need this information for configuring exports and AOLserver.

SVRMGR> create user birdnotes identified by birdnotespassword default tablespace birdnotes
temporary tablespace temp quota unlimited on birdnotes;
SVRMGR> grant connect, resource, ctxapp, javasyspriv, query rewrite to birdnotes;
SVRMGR> revoke unlimited tablespace from birdnotes;
SVRMGR> alter user birdnotes quota unlimited on birdnotes;
SVRMGR> exit;

Your table space is now ready. In case you are trying to delete a previous OpenACS installation, consult these commands in the section called “Deleting a tablespace” below.

Make sure that you can login to Oracle using your service_name account:

joeuser:~$ sqlplus birdnotes/birdnotespassword
SQL> select sysdate from dual;

SYSDATE
----------
2001-12-20

SQL> exit

You should see today's date in a format 'YYYY-MM-DD.' If you can't login, try redoing step 1 again. If the date is in the wrong format, make sure you followed the steps outlined in the section called “Troubleshooting Oracle Dates”

Next we'll set up AOLserver so that it has the proper environment variables set before launching. Download this nsd-oracle script into /tmp/nsd-oracle.txt :

joeuser:~$ su -
Password: ********
root:~# cd /usr/local/aolserver/bin
root:/usr/local/aolserver/bin# cp /tmp/nsd-oracle.txt ./nsd-oracle
root:/usr/local/aolserver/bin# chmod 750 nsd-oracle
root:/usr/local/aolserver/bin# exit

server - This is the name of the directory where your code resides. In our example above, we used birdnotes.

db_name - In almost all cases, this can be kept as a reference to $server. If for some reason, the tablespace you are using is different than your servername, then you can set it here. You should have a good reason for doing this.

servername - This is just a *pretty* name for your server. For example, we might call ours "Birdnotes.net Community"

httpport - If you want your server on a different port, enter it here

user_account - The account that will both own OpenACS files and connect to the database (for Postgresql).

You should see a page from the webserver titled OpenACS Installation: Welcome. You will be warned if your version of the database driver is out of date, if AOLserver cannot connect to the database, if any modules are missing or out-of-date, or if there are any problems with filesystem permissions on the server side. But if everything is fine, you can click Next to proceed to load the OpenACS Kernel data model.

The next page shows the results of loading the OpenACS Kernel data model - be prepared to wait a few minutes as it works. You should see a string of output messages from the database as the datamodel is created. You'll see the line:

Loading package .info files ... this will take a few minutes

This will really take a few minutes. Have faith! Finally, another Next button will appear at the bottom - click it.

The following page shows the results of loading the core package data models. You should see positive results for each of the previously selected packages, but watch out for any errors. Eventually, the page will display "Generating secret tokens" and then "Done"- click Next.

You should see a page, "OpenACS Installation: Create Administrator" with form fields to define the OpenACS site administrator. Fill out the fields as appropriate, and click Create User.

You should see a page, "OpenACS Installation: Set System Information" allowing you to name your service. Fill out the fields as appropriate, and click Set System Information

You'll see the final Installer page, "OpenACS Installation: Complete." It will tell you that the server is being restarted; note that unless you already set up a way for AOLServer to restart itself (ie. inittab or daemontools), you'll need to manually restart your service.

joeuser:~$ /usr/local/aolserver/bin/nsd-postgres -t ~/web/birdnotes/nsd.tcl

Give the server a few minutes to start up. Then reload the final page above. You should see the front page, with an area to login near the upper right. Congratulations, OpenACS 4.6 is now up and running!