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Mat Kovach is graciously maintaining an AOLServer distribution that includes all the patches and modules needed to run OpenACS 4.6. 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 uptime.openacs.org.
It's also possible to download all the pieces and patches yourself:
AOLServer is available at aolserver.com
ArsDigita's AOLServer distribution (including internationalization patches, nscache, nsrewrite, nssha1 and the oracle driver) is available at arsdigita.com
The OpenACS PostgreSQL driver (nspostgres.so) is available from SourceForge. 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)
nsxml is available at http://acs-misc.sourceforge.net.
The patch that makes exec work on BSD is available at sourceforge.net
The patch that makes ns_uuencode work for binary files is available at sourceforge.net
The patch that makes AOLServer respect the -g flag is available at sourceforge.net
.... or just Download Mat's AOLServer distribution to /tmp
joeuser:~$ cd /tmp joeuser:/tmp$ wget -c http://uptime.openacs.org/aolserver-openacs/aolserver3.3ad13-oacs1-beta-src.tar.gz joeuser:/tmp$ cd
As root, untar aolserver3.3ad13-oacs1-beta-src.tar.gz into /usr/local/src
joeuser:~$ su - Password: ********** root:~# cd /usr/local/src root:/usr/local/src# tar xzf /tmp/aolserver3.3ad13-oacs1-beta-src.tar.gz root:/usr/local/src# chown -R root.root aolserver
AOLserver needs to be started as the root user if you want to use port 80. Once it starts, though, it will drop the root privileges and run as another user, which you must specify on the command line. It's important that this user has as few privileges as possible. Why? Because if an intruder somehow breaks in through AOLserver, you don't want him to have any ability to do damage to the rest of your server. At the same time, AOLserver needs to have write access to some files on your system in order for OpenACS to function properly. So, we'll run AOLserver as the nobody user and the web group. We'll add your regular user account to the web group and make sure that OpenACS files are group readable and writable.
Run these commands:
root:/usr/local/src# cd
root:~# groupadd web
root:~# adduser joeuser web
root:~# exitNext, we'll set up our environment variables. Add the following lines to your /home/joeuser/.bash_profile:
joeuser:~$ emacs .bash_profile
Add the first set of lines, if you're using Oracle. The 2nd set of lines, if you're using PostgreSQL. Oracle Note: These environment variables are specific for a local Oracle installation communicating via IPC. If you are connecting to a remote Oracle installation, you'll need to adjust these appropriately. Also, make sure that the '8.1.7' matches your Oracle version.
# For Oracle export ORACLE_BASE=/ora8/m01/app/oracle export ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/product/8.1.7 export PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:/lib:/usr/lib export ORACLE_SID=ora8 export ORACLE_TERM=vt100 export ORA_NLS33=$ORACLE_HOME/ocommon/nls/admin/data # For PostgreSQL export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/pgsql/bin export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/pgsql/lib
Be absolutely certain that you have entered these lines correctly and that you have saved the file - a slight error in these lines can lead to many inscrutable error messages. Logout and log back in so these settings will take effect. Use the echo command to be sure that the environment variables have been properly assigned.
joeuser:~$ exit LOGIN: joeuser Password: ********* joeuser:~$ echo $PATH ...some other directory paths...:/usr/local/pgsql/bin joeuser:~$ echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH :/usr/local/pgsql/lib
Note: The result should be different if you're using Oracle. /ora8/m01/app/oracle/product/8.1.7 should have been in $PATH.
In order for nsxml to compile, you need libxml2 (available from http://xmlsoft.org). On Debian, this can be installed by doing apt-get install libxml2-dev. Users of other distributions can download rpms from rpmfind.net. You'll need the libxml2 and libxml2-devel packages.
Prepare the distribution. You need to be root.
joeuser:~$ su -p Password: ******** root:~# mkdir -p /usr/local/aolserver root:~# cd /usr/local/src/aolserver root:/usr/local/src/aolserver# ./conf-clean cat: BUILD-MODULES: No such file or directory Done.
Put the name of the driver(s) that you want into conf-db. This can be "postgresql", "oracle", or the word "both" if you want both drivers installed.
root:/usr/local/src/aolserver# echo "postgresql" > conf-db
conf-inst should contain the location where AOLserver is to be installed. This defaults to /usr/local/aolserver, so we don't need to change it.
conf-make should contain the name of the GNU Make command on your system. It defaults to gmake. You may need to change this to make.
root:/usr/local/src/aolserver# echo "make" > conf-make
If you're going to be installing the Postgresql driver, you'll have to adjust the makefile first. This will hopefully be cleaned up in future versions of this distribution.
root:/usr/local/src/aolserver# emacs pgdriver/makefile
Edit the lines containing PGLIB and PGINC so they look like this:
PGINC=/usr/local/pgsql/include PGLIB=/usr/local/pgsql/lib
Compile and install AOLserver and modules
root:/usr/local/src/aolserver# ./conf
This takes about 5 minutes. All of the results are logged to files in /usr/local/src/aolserver/log. Make sure to check these files to see if any errors occurred.
In order to test AOLserver, we'll run it using the sample-config.tcl file provided in the AOLserver distribution. We need to adjust permissions a little since AOLserver needs to be able to write its logs properly.
root:/usr/local/src/aolserver# cd /usr/local/aolserver root:/usr/local/aolserver# chown -R root.web log servers root:/usr/local/aolserver# chmod -R g+w log servers root:/usr/local/aolserver# ls -l drwxr-sr-x 8 root staff 1024 Nov 12 01:35 . drwxrwsr-x 12 root staff 1024 Nov 12 01:25 .. drwxr-xr-x 2 root staff 1024 Nov 12 01:36 bin drwxr-xr-x 2 root staff 1024 Jun 11 2001 include drwxr-xr-x 3 root staff 1024 Nov 12 01:36 lib drwxrwxr-x 2 root web 1024 Nov 12 01:45 log drwxr-xr-x 3 root staff 1024 Nov 12 01:35 modules -rw-r--r-- 1 root staff 7320 Mar 31 2001 sample-config.tcl drwxrwxr-x 3 root web 1024 Nov 12 01:35 servers
Now, we'll run a quick test to ensure AOLserver is running correctly. We'll use the sample config file provided with AOLserver. This file will attempt to guess your IP address and hostname. It will then start up the server at port 8000 of that IP address.
root:/usr/local/aolserver# ./bin/nsd -t sample-config.tcl -u nobody -g web
As the AOLserver daemon starts up, you should see a few normal warnings (listed below), which are safe to ignore.
Warning: nsd.tcl: nsssl not loaded -- key/cert files do not exist. Warning: nsd.tcl: nscp not loaded -- user/password is not set.
The first warning means that the server is missing files for running ssl, a necessary module for encrypted HTTPS. See Scott Goodwin's excellent documentation if you want to set up SSL. The second warning means that the AOLserver control panel, a special module for administering AOLserver, could not be loaded. If you're interested in configuring nscp, please see the AOLserver documentation.
Test to see if AOLserver is working by starting Mozilla or Lynx, and surfing over to your web page:
root:~# lynx localhost:8000
You should see a "Welcome to AOLserver" page. If this doesn't work, try going to http://127.0.0.1:8000/. If this still doesn't work, check out the Troubleshooting AOLServer section below.
Shutdown the test server:
root:~# killall nsd
The killall command will kill all processes with the name nsd, but clearly this is not a good tool to use for managing your services in general. We cover this topic in the Keep AOLServer alive section.
If you can't view the welcome page, it's likely there's a problem with your server configuration. Start by viewing your AOLserver log, which is in /usr/local/aolserver/log/server.log. You should also try to find lines of the form:
[01/Jun/2000:12:11:20][5914.2051][-nssock-] Notice: nssock: listening on http://localhost.localdomain:8000 (127.0.0.1:8000) [01/Jun/2000:12:11:20][5914.2051][-nssock-] Notice: accepting connections
If you can find these lines, try entering the URL the server is listening on. If you cannot find these lines, there must be an error somewhere in the file. Search for lines beginning with the word Error instead of Notice.
The sample-config.tcl file grabs your address and hostname from your OS settings.
set hostname [ns_info hostname] set address [ns_info address]
If you get an error that nssock can't get the requested address, you can set these manually. If you type 0.0.0.0, AOLserver will try to listen on all available addresses.
set hostname [ns_info hostname] #set address [ns_info address] set address 0.0.0.0