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We won't provide detailed instructions to install an operating system since there are so many valid choices available and each OS has their own installation procedures.
Members of the OpenACS community use a variety of UNIX, Linux, BSD and even Windows systems. The remainder of this guide will be specific to Linux. Users of other OS's may find some helpful information here, but we recommend that you instead use one of these OS specific guides to install OpenACS 4.6.
This guide is currently valid for Mac OS 10.04, but it's being updated for OS 10.1 as we speak. In the meantime, eager 10.1 users can see this bboard thread for some help.
OpenACS Installation Guide for Windows 2000
This was written for ACS and has not yet been updated for OpenACS. (Note: AOLServer is not currently supported on Windows, but this may change soon. Keep an eye on the AOLserver mailing list or the OpenACS forums) Another alternative is to use John Sequeira's Oasis VM, which is basically a fully working OpenACS 4.6 system that you load into VMware.
I'm currently using Debian GNU/Linux, so this guide may show that bias. Installation on any Linux distribution should be similar and we'll try to point out differences where they exist.
When you do install your system, be sure to set up enough swap space - at least 400 MB for Oracle, less for PostgreSQL. A rule of thumb is to set aside a swap partition which is twice your RAM size.
Some things that you will need:
| Requirement | Reason |
|---|---|
| recent kernel | Version 2.2.22 or greater is the standard requirement. I used version 2.4.19 for this guide. |
| bash | Bash is the standard Linux shell and we assume you are using bash for these instructions. If not, you will need to substitute your shell's conventions for setting environment variables when appropriate. |
| glibc 2.1 (or greater) | You need recent versions of these libraries for Oracle to work properly. If you want Unicode support, you'll need glibc 2.2. |
| GNU Make (3.76.1 or better) | PostgreSQL and AOLserver require gmake to compile. Note that on most linux distributions, GNU Make is simply named make and there is no gmake, whereas on BSD distributions, make and gmake are different. |
| Tcl 8.3 development package (headers, libraries) | The site-wide-search service, OpenFTS, requires these to compile. (Debian users: apt-get install tcl8.3-dev) |
| libxml2 | OpenACS 4.6 stores queries in XML files, so libxml2 is used to parse these files. (Debian users: apt-get install libxml2-dev) |
| daemontools | If you decide to follow our recommendations, you'll need daemontools installed. We'll explain where to get it when you need it. |
| docbook-xml, docbook-xsl, libxslt, xsltproc | Only needed if you plan to write or edit OpenACS documentation. (docbook-xml v4.2, docbook-xsl v1.56, libxslt 1.0.21, xsltproc 1.0.21) |
| a MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) | An MTA is needed for OpenACS to send notifications or handle incoming mail. Qmail seems to be the most popular choice in the OpenACS community. Other options include Postfix, Exim and Sendmail. |
Locations:
We'll compile stuff in /usr/local/src
PostgreSQL will go into /usr/local/pgsql
AOLServer will go into /usr/local/aolserver
The web root will go into your home directory (e.g. /home/joeuser/web)
None of these locations are set in stone - they're simply the values that we've chosen. You are free to install your software in other locations, but you'll need to adjust the instructions in this document to point to those locations.
Note that previous versions of this document recommended using /web for the web root and running AOLserver as the nsadmin user. For security and compatibility reasons, this is no longer recommended.
This guide will use joeuser as a normal user. Substitute your own username wherever you see joeuser.
Here's a list of some helpful documentation for various OS's
Painless Debian GNU/Linux by Stephen van Egmond
Once you get your OS installed, it's imperative that you secure your installation. As Jon Griffin repeatedly warns us, "No distribution is secure out of the box." Again, this topic is too big to cover properly here, so see these links.