128MB RAM (much more if you want Oracle)

1GB free space on your hard drive (much more if you want Oracle)

A Unix-like operating system with Tcl, tDOM, and a mail transport agent like sendmail or qmail. (see the section called “Prerequisite Software”)

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 eq "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. The command prompt varies by system; in the examples we use the form[$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME aolserver]$, where $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME is the current user and aolserver is the current directory. The root prompt is shown ending in # and all other prompts in $.

[root root]# su - $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME
[$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME aolserver]$ svc -d /service/$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME
[$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME aolserver]$ dropdb $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME
DROP DATABASE
[$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME aolserver]$ createdb $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME
CREATE DATABASE
su - $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME
svc -d /service/$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME
dropdb $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME
createdb $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME

Setting a global shell variable for cut and paste. In order to cut and paste the instructions into your shell, you must set the environment variable $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME. In order to set it globally so that it works for any new users or special service users you may create, edit the file /etc/profile ( /etc/share/skel/dot.profile for FreeBSD) and add this line:

export OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME=service0

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.