%myvars; ]> The basic steps to getting OpenACS up and running are: Install an OS (Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, , , ). Install a database (Oracle or PostgreSQL). Install the AOLserver webserver. Create a unique database and system user. Install the OpenACS tarball, start and AOLserver instance, and use the OpenACS web pages to complete installation (). The patched version of AOLserver we use is not currently available in a precompiled binary. The packaged version of PostgreSQL in Debian and Red Hat and FreeBSD ports works fine. Jonathan Marsden has created RPMs (at http://www.xc.org) for OpenACS 4.5 but there are not yet any for version &version;. An experimental script automates OpenACS checkout and installation. You will need a PC (or equivalent) with at least these minimum requirements: Pentium processor 128 MB RAM (much more if you want Oracle) 4 GB hard drive A Unix-like operating system with tcl, tdom, and a mail transport agent. () All of the software that you will need is free and open-source, except for Oracle. You can obtain a free copy of Oracle for development purposes. This is described in the section.

OpenACS Version 3.2.5 4.5 4.6 4.6.1 4.6.2 4.6.3 5.0.0 AOLserver 3 Verified No 3.3+ad13 Untested Verified 3.3oacs1 Untested Verified 3.4.2 No 3.4.2oacs1 Untested Verified Untested 3.5.5 Untested Verified No 4.0 Untested Verified PostgreSQL 7.0 Verified No 7.2.x Verified No 7.3.2 - 7.3.4 No Verified 7.4 No Untested Oracle 8.1.6 Verified 8.1.7 Verified 9i No Untested

At the time of writing AOLserver 4.0 has been tested with OpenACS and works but has not been used in production. OpenACS 5.0.0 installs successfully on PostgreSQL 7.4 and Oracle 9i but not all packages outside core have been tested. This is text you will see on screen, such as a Button or link in a radio button list or menu. This is text that you will type. This is text from a program or file which you may need to examine or edit: if {$database == "oracle"} { set db_password "mysitepassword" } This is text that you will see and type in a command shell, including text you may have to change. It is followed by a list of just the commands, which you can copy and paste. [root@localhost root]# su - nsadmin [nsadmin@localhost aolserver]$ svc -d /service/server1 [nsadmin@localhost aolserver]$ dropdb server1 DROP DATABASE [nsadmin@localhost aolserver]$ createdb server1 CREATE DATABASE su - nsadmin svc -d /service/server1 dropdb server1 createdb server1

Fully qualified domain name of your server yourserver.test name of administrative access account remadmin OpenACS service service0 service0 OpenACS service account service0 OpenACS database name service0 Root of OpenACS service file tree /var/lib/aolserver/service0 Location of source code tarballs for new software /tmp The OpenACS tarball contains some files which are useful while setting up other software. Those files are located at: /tmp/&tarballpath;/packages/acs-core-docs/www/files Database backup directory /var/lib/aolserver/service0/database-backup Service config files /var/lib/aolserver/service0/etc Service log files /var/lib/aolserver/service0/log Compile directory /usr/local/src PostgreSQL directory /usr/local/pgsql AOLserver directory /usr/local/aolserver

None of these locations are set in stone - they're simply the values that we've chosen. The values that you'll probably want to change, such as service name, are marked like this. The other values we recommend you leave unchanged unless you have a reason to change them. Some of the paths and user accounts have been changed from those recommended in previous versions of this document to improve security and maintainability. See this thread for discussion. We'll do our best to assure that following our instructions will get you to the promised land. If something goes wrong, don't panic. There are plenty of ways to get help. Here are some tips: Keep track of the commands you are run and record their output. I like to do my installations in a shell inside of emacs (M-x shell) so that I can save the output if needed. An alternative would be to use the script command. We'll point out where the error logs for the various pieces of software are. Output from those logs will help us help you. Don't worry if you feel overwhelmed by all the information in the error logs. Over time, you'll find that they make more and more sense. Soon, you'll actually look forward to errors so that you can run to the log and diagnose the problem. Search the forums at openacs.org - you'll often find many people who have struggled through the same spot that you're in. The bottom of each page has a link to OpenACS.org, where you can post comments and read other users comments about the contents of the page. Ask questions at the irc channel on freenode.net (#openacs). They're knowledgeable and quite friendly if you can keep them on topic. Post a question on the forums. Make sure you've done a search first. When you do post, be sure to include your setup information (OS, etc) as well as the exact commands that are failing with the accompanying error. If there's a SQL error in the TCL error or in the log, post that too. If you find errors in this document or if you have ideas about making it better, please post them in our BugTracker. ($Id: overview.xml,v 1.12 2003/10/28 22:07:41 joela Exp $)