Overview
by Vinod Kurup
What is OpenACS?
According to Philip Greenspun:
The ArsDigita Community System (ACS) is a toolkit of software
that will help you build Web services with a collaborative dimension,
ranging from knowledge management within companies to B2C ecommerce
to product support and community among the customers. The software is
free and open-source and has been tested in heavy use since
1995.
What's OpenACS? OpenACS was born when Don Baccus, Ben Adida,
et al decided to port ACS from Oracle to
PostgreSQL, thus making it a fully open-source solution.
OpenACS &version; is the next generation of the web toolkit. It's based on
ACS 4, but no longer follows ArsDigita development. Unlike both ACS
(which required Oracle) and OpenACS 3.x (which required PostgreSQL),
OpenACS &version; allows you to use either database. It's also built in such
a way to allow enterprising hackers (in the good sense of
the word) to extend it to other databases. Don Baccus leads
the development and numerous developers (and non-developers)
contribute from around the world.
Purpose of this document
This document will describe how to install, configure, and
maintain an installation of OpenACS &version; on a Unix-like
system, including all supporting software. All examples
in this chapter are part of the OpenACS &version;-P or
OpenACS &version;-O Reference Platform, which use Red
Hat 8.0. Differences between the Reference Platform
and common alternate platforms are noted where known.
Requirements
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
You will need all of the required software.
If you want to serve pages to people outside of your machine, you'll
need a network connection of some type.
Note that these are minimum requirements to get a development system
up and running. For a production system, we recommend you read about
the ArsDigita
Server Architecture
Running a reliable database-backed web server requires experience
with the server's environment, in this case UNIX. UNIX is not always
an intuitive environment and this guide cannot hope to explain every
nuance. You should be comfortable with the following tasks before
attempting an installation:
Adding users, groups, setting passwords
(For Oracle) Starting an X server and running an X program remotely
Basic file management using cp, rm,
mv, and cd
Compiling a program using ./config and make.
If you've never done these things before, consider exploring UNIX in
greater depth before installing OpenACS. Some useful resources for
doing this are described in the
section.
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.
Steps involved
The basic steps to getting OpenACS up and running are:
Install an OS
Install a webserver (AOLServer)
Install a database (Oracle or
PostgreSQL)
Install a database driver (allows the webserver to talk to the database)
Start the OpenACS installer, which will configure a database instance..
How to use this guide
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
What if I get stuck?
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 bboards 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 openprojects.net
(#openacs). They're knowledgeable and quite friendly
if you can keep them on topic.
Post a question on the bboards. 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.
Is there an easier way?
After reading through this tome, you may ask yourself if there is a
better way. Well, not quite. Jonathan Marsden has created RPMs (at
http://www.xc.org)
for OpenACS 4.5 but there are not yet any for version
&version;. There has been talk about automating the install process,
but that hasn't happened yet. Stay tuned!
Where did this document come from?
This document was created by Vinod Kurup, but it's really
just plagiarism from a number of documents that came before it. If
I've used something that you've written without proper credit, let me
know and I'll fix it right away.
Version &version; was edited by Joel Aufrecht.
These are a few of my sources:
ArsDigita installation guide
OpenACS 3.x installation guide
Gilbert Wong's FreeBSD
installation guide
Vinod Kurup's Brief OpenACS4
installation guide
Joel
Aufrecht's OpenACS 4.5 Quick Guide.
Please also see the section for more acknowledgements.
Linux Install Guides
Here's a list of some helpful documentation for various OS's
Painless Debian
GNU/Linux by Stephen van Egmond
Official
Debian Guide
RedHat
Mandrake
SuSE
Security Information
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." The Reference Platform implements
some basic precautions, but security is a process, not a
condition. If you are responsible for a computer hooked to the
internet, you are responsible for learning some rudiments of
security, such as monitoring the state of a computer,
maintaining patch levels, and keeping backups. We recommend
these resources:
Securing and Optimizing Linux - version 2.0
Jon
Griffin's notes
Linux Administrators
Security Guide
Installation
of a Secure Webserver
Bruce
Schneier's Crypto-Gram, especially The
security patch treadmill and Monitoring First.
Resources
Here are some resources that OpenACS users have found useful.
Books
Philip
and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing - A very readable
guide to database-backed community websites.
UNIX
Power Tools - An excellent introduction to the
command line tools and basic programs of UNIX
UNIX
System Administration Handbook (formerly the "red book"
- now the "purple" book)
UNIX
System Administrator's Bible - (LePage and Iarerra 1998;
IDG)
Running
Linux
Learning
Gnu Emacs
Linux
in a Nutshell
Web Sites
The UNIX
Reference Desk
The Linux Documentation
Project
LPI
certification exam preps - A series of articles from
IBM developerworks on basic and intermediate Linux skills
(requires registration)
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