<property name="context">{/doc/acs-core-docs {Documentation}} {Prerequisite Software}</property>
<property name="doc(title)">Prerequisite Software</property>
<master>
<include src="/packages/acs-core-docs/lib/navheader"
		    leftLink="install-steps" leftLabel="Prev"
		    title="
Chapter 2. Installation Overview"
		    rightLink="complete-install" rightLabel="Next">
		<div class="sect1">
<div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both">
<a name="individual-programs" id="individual-programs"></a>Prerequisite Software</h2></div></div></div><div class="authorblurb">
<p>by <a class="ulink" href="mailto:joel\@aufrecht.org" target="_top">Joel Aufrecht</a>
</p>
OpenACS docs are written by the named authors, and may be edited by
OpenACS documentation staff.</div><p>OpenACS requires, at a minimum, an operating system, database,
and webserver to work. Many additional programs, such as a build
environment, Mail Transport Agent, and source control system, are
also needed for a fully effective installation.</p><div class="table">
<a name="compatibility-matrix" id="compatibility-matrix"></a><p class="title"><b>Table 2.2. Version
Compatibility Matrix</b></p><div class="table-contents"><table summary="Version Compatibility Matrix" cellspacing="0" border="1">
<colgroup>
<col class="c1"><col class="c2"><col class="3.2.5"><col class="4.5"><col class="4.6"><col class="4.6.1"><col class="4.6.2"><col class="4.6.3"><col class="5.0"><col class="5.1">
</colgroup><thead><tr>
<th colspan="2" align="center">OpenACS Version</th><th>3.2.5</th><th>4.5</th><th>4.6</th><th>4.6.1</th><th>4.6.2</th><th>4.6.3</th><th>5.0</th><th>5.1</th><th>5.2</th><th>5.3</th><th>5.4</th><th>5.5</th>
</tr></thead><tbody>
<tr>
<td rowspan="8">AOLserver</td><td>3</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" align="center">Yes</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="11" align="center">No</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>3.3+ad13</td><td bgcolor="yellow" align="center">Maybe</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="7" align="center">Yes</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="4" align="center">No</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>3.3oacs1</td><td bgcolor="yellow" align="center">Maybe</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="7" align="center">Yes</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="4" align="center">No</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>3.4.4</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="12" align="center">No</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>3.4.4oacs1</td><td bgcolor="yellow" colspan="4" align="center">Maybe</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="2" align="center">Yes</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="6" align="center">No</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>3.5.5</td><td bgcolor="yellow" colspan="4" align="center">Maybe</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="2" align="center">Yes</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="6" align="center">No</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>4.0</td><td bgcolor="yellow" colspan="4" align="center">Maybe</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="8" align="center">Yes</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>4.5</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="8" align="center">No</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="4" align="center">Yes</td>
</tr><tr>
<td rowspan="2">Tcl</td><td>8.4</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="12" align="center">Yes</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>8.5.4 -</td><td bgcolor="yellow" colspan="12" align="center">Maybe</td>
</tr><tr>
<td rowspan="8">PostgreSQL</td><td>7.0</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" align="center">Yes</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="11" align="center">No</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>7.2</td><td bgcolor="yellow" align="center">Maybe</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="5" align="center">Yes</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="6" align="center">No</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>7.3.2 - 7.3.x</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="5" align="center">No</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="4" align="center">Yes</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="3" align="center">No</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>7.4</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="6" align="center">No</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="3" align="center">Yes</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="3" align="center">No</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>8.0</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="7" align="center">No</td><td bgcolor="yellow" align="center">Maybe</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="4" align="center">Yes</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>8.1</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="8" align="center">No</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="4" align="center">Yes</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>8.2</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="8" align="center">No</td><td bgcolor="yellow" align="center">CVS version only</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="3" align="center">Yes</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>8.3</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="11" align="center">No</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" align="center">Yes</td>
</tr><tr>
<td rowspan="5">Oracle</td><td>8.1.6</td><td bgcolor="yellow" align="center">Maybe</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="8" align="center">Yes</td><td bgcolor="yellow" colspan="3" align="center">Maybe</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>8.1.7</td><td bgcolor="yellow" align="center">Maybe</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="8" align="center">Yes</td><td bgcolor="yellow" colspan="3" align="center">Maybe</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>9i</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="6" align="center">No</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="6" align="center">Yes</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>10g</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="8" align="center">No</td><td bgcolor="lightgreen" colspan="4" align="center">Yes</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>11g</td><td bgcolor="red" colspan="11" align="center">No</td><td bgcolor="yellow" align="center">Maybe</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table></div>
</div><br class="table-break"><p>The OpenACS installation instructions assume the operating
system and build environment are installed. The instructions
explain installation of Tcl, Tcllib, tDOM, tclwebtest, a Web
Server, a Database, a Process Controller, and Source Control
software. The following external links are for reference only.</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc;">
<li class="listitem">
<a name="openacs-download" id="openacs-download"></a><p>The OpenACS tarball
comprises the core packages and many useful additional packages.
This includes a full set of documentation. The tarball works with
both PostgreSQL and Oracle. Some scripts require bash shell.</p>
</li><li class="listitem">
<p>
<b>Operating System. </b>OpenACS is designed for a
Unix-like system. It is developed primarily in Linux. It can be run
on Mac OS X, and in Windows within VMWare.</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: circle;">
<li class="listitem"><p>
<b>GNU/Linux. </b>The installation assumes a linux
kernel of 2.2.22 or newer, or 2.4.14 or newer.</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
<b>FreeBSD. </b><a class="ulink" href="http://www.orchardlabs.com/freebsd/" target="_top">FreeBSD
guide</a>. The OpenACS Reference Platform uses shell scripts
written for bash, which is the standard Linux shell. If you are
using a different shell, you will need to substitute your shell's
conventions for setting environment variables when appropriate, and
install bash to work with the scripts. Substitute <strong class="userinput"><code>fetch</code></strong> when the instructions
suggest you use <strong class="userinput"><code>wget</code></strong> to download software.</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
<b>Mac OS X. </b><a class="xref" href="mac-installation" title="OpenACS Installation Guide for Mac OS X">the section called
&ldquo;OpenACS Installation Guide for Mac OS
X&rdquo;</a>
</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
<b>Windows/VMWare. </b><a class="xref" href="win2k-installation" title="OpenACS Installation Guide for Windows2000">the section called
&ldquo;OpenACS Installation Guide for
Windows2000&rdquo;</a> The only way to run OpenACS on Windows
is through the VMWare emulator. (Please let me know if you have
OpenACS running directly in Windows.)</p></li>
</ul></div>
</li><li class="listitem">
<p>
<b>Build Environment. </b>The Reference Platform
installation compiles most programs from source code.</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: circle;">
<li class="listitem"><p>You need
recent versions of these libraries for Oracle to work properly. For
Unicode support, you need glibc 2.2 or newer. This should be
included in your operating system distribution.</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>PostgreSQL and AOLserver require gmake to
compile. Note that on most linux distributions, GNU Make is simply
named <code class="computeroutput">make</code> and there is no
<code class="computeroutput">gmake</code>, whereas on BSD
distributions, <code class="computeroutput">make</code> and
<code class="computeroutput">gmake</code> are different --use
gmake.</p></li>
</ul></div>
</li><li class="listitem">
<p></p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: circle;">
<li class="listitem"><p>OpenACS is written
in Tcl, an interpreted language. A threaded version of the Tcl
interpreter must be installed for OpenACS to work. The Tcl
interpreter that is included in most standard distributions may not
be thread safe.</p></li><li class="listitem"><p> The site-wide-search service, OpenFTS,
requires these to compile. (Debian users: <code class="computeroutput">apt-get install tcl8.5-dev</code>). You need this
to install OpenFTS.</p></li>
</ul></div>
</li><li class="listitem">
<a name="source-tcllib" id="source-tcllib"></a><p> OpenACS 5.7.0
uses those Tcl extensions to send e-mail out, among others.</p>
</li><li class="listitem">
<a name="source-tdom" id="source-tdom"></a><p>OpenACS 5.7.0 stores
queries in XML files, so we use an AOLserver module called tDOM to
parse these files. (This replaces libxml2, which was used prior to
4.6.4.)</p>
</li><li class="listitem">
<a name="source-tclwebtest" id="source-tclwebtest"></a><p>tclwebtest
is a tool for testing web interfaces via Tcl scripts.</p>
</li><li class="listitem">
<p>
<b>Web Server. </b>The web server handles incoming
HTTP requests, provides a runtime environment for OpenACS's Tcl
code, connects to the database, sends out HTTP responses, and logs
requests and errors. OpenACS uses AOLserver; <a class="ulink" href="http://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=21461" target="_top">some people have had success running Apache with
mod_nsd</a>.</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: circle;"><li class="listitem">
<a name="source-aolserver" id="source-aolserver"></a><p>Provides the
base HTTP server</p>
</li></ul></div><p>Mat Kovach is graciously maintaining an AOLserver distribution
that includes all the patches and modules needed to run OpenACS
5.7.0. These instructions will describe how to install using his
source distribution. He also has binaries for SuSE 7.3 and OpenBSD
2.8 (and perhaps more to come), currently located at <a class="ulink" href="http://uptime.openacs.org/aolserver-openacs/" target="_top">uptime.openacs.org</a>.</p><p>It's also possible to download all the pieces and patches
yourself:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: circle;">
<li class="listitem"><p>AOLserver is available at <a class="ulink" href="http://aolserver.com" target="_top">aolserver.com</a>
</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>The OpenACS PostgreSQL driver (nspostgres.so) is available from
<a class="ulink" href="http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/aolserver/nspostgres-3.5.tar.gz?download" target="_top">SourceForge</a>. If you do decide to use
nspostgres.so, you have to remember to change the AOLserver config
file to point to nspostgres.so instead of postgres.so. This guide
uses Mat Kovach's distro (i.e. postgres.so)</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>The patch that makes <code class="computeroutput">exec</code>
work on BSD is available at <a class="ulink" href="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&amp;aid=415475&amp;group_id=3152&amp;atid=303152" target="_top">sourceforge.net</a>
</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>The patch for aolserver 3.x that makes <code class="computeroutput">ns_uuencode</code> work for binary files is
available at <a class="ulink" href="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&amp;aid=474259&amp;group_id=3152&amp;atid=303152" target="_top">sourceforge.net</a>
</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>The patch that makes AOLserver 3.x respect the <code class="computeroutput">-g</code> flag is available at <a class="ulink" href="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&amp;aid=509413&amp;group_id=3152&amp;atid=303152" target="_top">sourceforge.net</a>
</p></li>
</ul></div>
</li><li class="listitem">
<a name="nsopenssl-download" id="nsopenssl-download"></a><p>
<b>nsopenssl, OPTIONAL. </b>Provides SSL
capabilities for AOLserver. It requires OpenSSL. You need this if
you want users to make secure (https) connections to your
webserver. aolserver3.x requires <a class="ulink" href="http://www.scottg.net/download/nsopenssl-2.1a.tar.gz" target="_top">nsopenssl 2.1a</a>. aolserver4.x requires nsopenssl3; see
<a class="ulink" href="http://www.aolserver.com/" target="_top">aolserver.com</a> for latest release. (<a class="ulink" href="http://www.scottg.net/webtools/aolserver/modules/nsopenssl/" target="_top">home page</a>)</p>
</li><li class="listitem">
<a name="nspam-download" id="nspam-download"></a><p>Provides
PAM capabilities for AOLserver. You need this if you want OpenACS
users to authenticate through a PAM module (such as RADIUS).</p>
</li><li class="listitem">
<a name="pam-radius-download" id="pam-radius-download"></a><p>Provides
RADIUS capabilities for PAM. You need this if you want to use
RADIUS authentication via PAM in OpenACS.</p>
</li><li class="listitem">
<a name="nsldap-download" id="nsldap-download"></a><p>Provides
LDAP capabilities for AOLserver. You need this if you want to use
LDAP authentication in OpenACS.</p>
</li><li class="listitem">
<a name="openfts-download" id="openfts-download"></a><p>Adds
full-text-search to PostgreSQL and includes a driver for AOLserver.
You need this if you want users to be able to search for any text
on your site. For postgres 7.4.x and higher, full text search is
also available via tsearch2.</p>
</li><li class="listitem"><p>
<a name="analog-download" id="analog-download"></a>This program examines web
server request logs, looks up DNS values, and produces a report.
You need this if you want to see how much traffic your site is
getting.</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
<a name="balance-download" id="balance-download"></a>"Balance is a simple but powerful generic
tcp proxy with round robin load balancing and failover mechanisms."
You need this or something equivalent if you are running a
high-availability production site and do not have an external load
balancing system.</p></li><li class="listitem">
<p>
<b>Database. </b>The data on your site (for example,
user names and passwords, calender entries, and notes) is stored in
the database. OpenACS separates the database with an abstraction
layer, which means that several different databases all function
identically. While you can run the core OpenACS on any supported
database, not all contributed packages support all databases.</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: circle;">
<li class="listitem"><p>
<b>Oracle 8.1.7 (Either this or PostgreSQL is
REQUIRED). </b>You can register and download Oracle
from <a class="ulink" href="http://otn.oracle.com/software/content.html" target="_top">Oracle
TechNet</a>. You need this if you want to use an Oracle
database.</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
<a name="source-postgresql" id="source-postgresql"></a>You need this if you want to use a
PostgreSQL database.</p></li>
</ul></div>
</li><li class="listitem">
<p>
<b>Process Controller. </b>This is software that
initiates other software, and restarts that software if it fails.
On Linux, we recommend using Daemontools to control AOLserver and
qmail.</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: circle;"><li class="listitem">
<a name="daemontools-download" id="daemontools-download"></a><p>You need
this if you want AOLserver and qmail to run "supervised," meaning
that they are monitored and automatically restarted if they fail.
An alternative would be to run the services from inittab.</p>
</li></ul></div>
</li><li class="listitem">
<p>
<b>Mail Transport Agent. </b>A Mail Transport Agent
is a program that handles all incoming and outgoing mail. The
Reference Platform uses Qmail; any MTA that provides a sendmail
wrapper (that is, that can be invoked by calling the sendmail
program with the same variables that sendmail expects) can be
used.</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: circle;">
<li class="listitem"><p>
<a name="qmail-download" id="qmail-download"></a>You need this
(or a different Mail Transport Agent) if you want your webserver to
send and receive email.</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
<a name="ucspi-download" id="ucspi-download"></a>This
program listens for incoming TCP connections and hands them to a
program. We use it instead of inetd, which is insecure. You need
this if you are running qmail.</p></li>
</ul></div>
</li><li class="listitem"><p>(docbook-xml v4.4,
docbook-xsl v1.56, libxslt 1.0.21, xsltproc 1.0.21). You need this
to write or edit documentation.</p></li><li class="listitem">
<p>
<b>Source Control. </b>A Source Control system keeps
track of all of the old versions of your files. It lets you recover
old files, compare versions of file, and identify specific versions
of files. You can use any source control system; the Reference
Platform and the OpenACS.org repository (where you can get patched
and development code in between releases) use cvs.</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: circle;"><li class="listitem"><p>cvs is included
in most unix distributions. You need this if you want to track old
versions of your files, do controlled deployment of code from
development to production, or get or contribute development code
from openacs.org.</p></li></ul></div>
</li>
</ul></div><div class="cvstag">($Id: individual-programs.html,v 1.33.2.1
2015/09/23 11:54:34 gustafn Exp $)</div>
</div>
<include src="/packages/acs-core-docs/lib/navfooter"
		    leftLink="install-steps" leftLabel="Prev" leftTitle="Basic Steps"
		    rightLink="complete-install" rightLabel="Next" rightTitle="
Chapter 3. Complete Installation"
		    homeLink="index" homeLabel="Home" 
		    upLink="install-overview" upLabel="Up">