TipsOpenAcs

?TableOfContents

Instalation of Aolserver under Debian

apt-get install aolserver4 aolserver4-nsopenssl \
                aolserver4-nscache aolserver4-nspostgres \
                aolserver4-nssha1 aolserver-nsxml \
                tdom tcllib

Additional utilites for several packages:
photo-album:: imagemagick
acs-mail-lite:: metamail (mmencode = mimencode)
tcl-library:: htmldoc
postgresql-contrib:: tsearch2 psql -d xxx tsearch2 as dbadmin, then grant permission..

Postgres

apt-get install postgresql

Select UNICODE encoding

/etc/postgresql/postgresql.conf

client_encoding = LATIN9

Configuration of Aolserver

The nice config at magma.com.ni for multiple virtual hosting:

http://www.magma.com.ni/sw/aolserver/

Don't forget to set up a log-service for aolserver (at /usr/lib/aolserver4/log), see ?TipsSupervise for details.

If you use supervise, you must stop logrotate from stopping/starting aolserver each monday:

cd /etc/logrotate.d
mv aolserver4 aolserver4.disabled

prepare certs and logfile. repeat this for each virtual server with ssl support, change myserver to the virtual server's name!

cd /etc/aolserver4
install -d -m 2750 -o root -g www-data certs
cp /usr/share/doc/aolserver4-nsopenssl/examples/tests/test-*.pem \
certs/
chmod o-r certs/*
cd certs
ln -s test-key.pem myserver.pem
ln -s test-cert.pem myserver.crt

chown -R www-data.adm /var/log/aolserver4
chmod 2750 /var/log/aolserver4
chmod 640 /var/log/aolserver4
install -d -m 2750 -o www-data -g adm \
  /var/log/aolserver/myserver

Download Open ACS from CVS

The following prepares the installation of OpenACS for several servers. It is recomended for a single server installation also. Benefits:

You can modify your static webpages anytime, without changeing the downloaded samples
You can add another server at any time - you will want to, when you develop and need a development server.
You can cvs update one single source-tree, and all servers will benefit. Note that the latter might not always be what you want.

cd /var/lib
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.openacs.org:/cvsroot login
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.openacs.org:/cvsroot co openacs-4
mkdir myopenacs
cd myopenacs
ln -s ../openacs-4/packages  .
ln -s ../openacs-4/tcl .
cp -a ../openacs-4/www .

Create several directories needed by OpenACS or dotLRN

install -d -m 755 -o www-data rss
install -d -m 755 -o www-data apm-workspace
install -d -m 755 -o www-data template
install -d -m 755 -o www-data templates
install -d -m 750 -o www-data content-repository-content-files

Caution! I do not know if it is "template", "templates" or both

Mail Service Light

.. INCOMPLETE ..

needs a user who receives Email in a Maildir. This needs to be the user running the Aolserver, to be able to read and delete messages from the Maildir.

dotLRN

Copy the install instructions (install.xml) from the dotLRN package to the pageroot before you start Aolserver and before you initialize the database.

cp packages/dotlrn/install.xml www

Hints

If your install binary does not do -d:

install -d -m 2755 -o www-data -g src apm-workspace

is equivalent to:

mkdir apm-workspace
chown www-data.src apm-workspace
chmod g+s apm-workspace

Unicode/LATIN9 character support:

Make sure to have this configuration in main.tcl

 ns_section "ns/parameters"
 ...
 # Character set Encoding
   ns_param   outputCharset      iso-8859-1
   ns_param   ?HackContentType    true

Package Status

LEG20070327: only openacs-5.2.3, downloaded as tarball with included packages worked. xotcl-core MUST not be installed.