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 her 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 with a different user account for each different service. A service name should be a single word, letters and numbers only. If the name of your site is one word, that would be a good choice. For example "$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME" might be the service name for the $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME.net community.

We'll leave the password blank, which prevents login by password, for increased security. The only way to log in will be with ssh certificates. The only people who should log in are developers for that specific instance. Add this user, and put it in the $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME group so that it can use database and server commands associated with that group. (If you don't know how to do this, type man usermod. You can type groups to find out which groups a user is a part of)

[root root]# useradd $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME

You also need to set up a group called web.

[root root]# groupadd web

Then change the user to be a part of this group:

[root root]# usermod -g web $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME

FreeBSD creates the user this way:

[root root]# mkdir -p /home/$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME

[root root]# pw useradd -n $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME -g web -d /home/$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME -s /bin/bash
[root root]#
mkdir -p /home/$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME
pw useradd -n $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME -g web -d /home/$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME -s /bin/bash

For Linux Standard Base compliance and ease of backup, all of the files in each OpenACS site are stored in a subdirectory of /var/lib/aolserver, one subdirectory per site. The first time you install an OpenACS site on a server, you must create the parent directory and set its permissions:

[root root]# mkdir /var/lib/aolserver
[root root]# chgrp web /var/lib/aolserver
[root root]# chmod 770 /var/lib/aolserver
[root root]#
mkdir /var/lib/aolserver
chgrp web /var/lib/aolserver
chmod 770 /var/lib/aolserver

A bash script is available to automate all of the steps for the rest of this section. It requires tclwebtest. The automated script can greatly accelerate the install process, but is very sensitive to the install environment. We recommend that you run the automated install and, if it does not work the first time, consider switching to a manual installation.

Get the install script from CVS. It is located within the main cvs tree, at /etc/install. Use anonymous CVS checkout to get that directory in the home directory of the service's dedicated user. We put it there so that it is not overwritten when we do the main CVS checkout to the target location.

[root root]# su - $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME

[$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME]$ cvs -d :pserver:anonymous\@cvs.openacs.org:/cvsroot co -d install openacs-4/etc/install
cvs server: Updating install
U install/README
U install/TODO
  ... many lines omitted ...
U install/tcl/twt-procs.tcl
U install/tcl/user-procs.tcl
[$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME]$ cd install
[$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME install]$ emacs install.tcl

Edit the installation configuration file, /home/$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME/install/install.tcl and update the site-specific values, such as the new service's IP address and name, which will be written into the new service's config.tcl file. If your system is different from the one described in the previous sections, check the file paths as well. Set do_checkout=yes to create a new OpenACS site directly from a CVS checkout, or =no if you have a fully configured site and just want to rebuild it (drop and recreate the database and repeat the installation). If you have followed a stock installation, the default configuration will work without changes and will install an OpenACS site at 127.0.0.1:8000.

Run the install script install.sh as root:

[$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME $OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME]$ exit 
[root root]# sh /home/$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME/install/install.sh
/home/$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME/install/install.sh: Starting installation with config_file 
/home/$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME/install/install.tcl. Using serverroot=/var/lib/aolserver/
$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME, server_url=http://0.0.0.0:8000, do_checkout=yes, do_install=yes, 
dotlrn=no, and database=postgres., use_daemontools=true
  ... many lines omitted ...
Tue Jan 27 11:50:59 CET 2004: Finished (re)installing /var/lib/aolserver/$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME.
######################################################################
  New site URL: http://127.0.0.1:8000
admin email   : admin\@yourserver.net
admin password: xxxx
######################################################################
[root root]#

You can proceed to the section called “Next Steps”.

You should already have downloaded the OpenACS tarball to the /var/tmp directory. If not, download the OpenACS tarball and save it in /var/tmp and proceed:

If you want to track fresh code developments between releases, or you are an OpenACS core developer, you may want to install from CVS. This is identical to Option 2 except that you get the files from CVS instead of the tarball: CVS Checkout Instructions. In short, instead of tar xzf /var/tmp/openacs-5.9.0.tgz, use cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous\@openacs.org:/cvsroot co acs-core to obtain an ACS core installation.