AOLserver is a fast, reliable, and scalable web server, and the server
of choice for the ArsDigita Community System. For more information
on AOLserver, you can read Philip Greenspun's introduction
part 1 and
part 2.
Setup User Accounts and Paths.
You will need a special user account for running the ACS. We
recommend that you call this user nsadmin. This user will
have a special home directory for storing AOLserver,
/home/aol31 and a special group for the server files,
web as well. You will also need to create directories for
AOLserver, /usr/local/aolserver, and for web services,
/web to reside in. You must execute this step as root.
- Open up a terminal and run these commands:
$ su -
; Enter ROOT password when prompted
# groupadd nsadmin
# groupadd web
# mkdir /home/aol31
# useradd -g nsadmin -G dba,web -d /home/aol31 nsadmin
# passwd nsadmin
; Set password for nsadmin
# mkdir /web
# mkdir /usr/local/aolserver
# chown nsadmin.web /home/aol31
# chown nsadmin.web /web
# chown nsadmin.web /usr/local/aolserver
# chmod 775 /home/aol31
# chmod 775 /web
# chmod 775 /usr/local/aolserver
# exit
- At this point, you should customize the nsadmin login
scripts. Login as nsadmin and add the following lines to
your ~nsadmin/.bash_profile
export ORACLE_BASE=/ora8/m01/app/oracle
export ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/product/8.1.6
export PATH=$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
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.
TOP
Download the Distribution
Login as nsadmin and save files to the /tmp directory.
- Download the AOLserver distribution and the Oracle driver (needed for
db connectivity and the ACS). You must download the source
distribution of AOLserver in order to compile the Oracle driver.
We recommend saving these archives in the /tmp directory on
your server.
- Uncompress the downloaded components; you may need to
substitute different files names and account for directory names
different from the ones below -- these were the files as of 9/2000 :
$ cd /tmp {or wherever the archives are}
$ tar -xzf aolserver-src-3.1ad8.tar.gz
$ tar -xzf oracle-driver-2.3.tar.gz
- You should now have two directory trees in the current
directory: aolserver/ and oracle-driver-2.3/.
Move the oracle directory under the aolserver directory to make
compiling the Oracle driver easier:
$ mv oracle-driver-2.3 aolserver
TOP
Compile AOLserver
This step should be completed as the nsadmin user. You will compile
the AOLserver distribution and prepare for installation.
TOP
Compile the Oracle Driver
Now you need to compile the Oracle driver to enable database connectivity.
- Change directories to the aolserver/oracle-driver-2.3
directory and start the compilation:
$ cd /tmp/aolserver/oracle-driver-2.3
$ make all
The following compiler warning may be ignored:
ld: warning: type and size of dynamic symbol `sskgslgf' are not defined
If the compilation failed, make sure the environment variables above
actually point to where you installed the AOLserver source code.
If you followed our instructions, this should not be a problem.
You can check the directories by doing:
$ ls /tmp/aolserver/include
If you don't see any files, then you have the wrong directories. Verify
your installation of Oracle and AOLserver and try again.
If compilation was successful, you should now have two new files
in /tmp/aolserver/oracle-driver-2.3, ora8.so and
ora8cass.so.
TOP
Install AOLserver 3.1
You are now ready to install AOLserver.
- Change directories to your AOLserver source distribution
and run make install to install the files:
$ cd /tmp/aolserver
$ make install
The above will copy the compiled AOLserver files to
/usr/local/aolserver
- You should now have a /usr/local/aolserver/bin
directory. Copy the previously compiled Oracle drivers into it:
$ cp /tmp/aolserver/oracle-driver-2.3/ora8.so /usr/local/aolserver/bin
$ cp /tmp/aolserver/oracle-driver-2.3/ora8cass.so /usr/local/aolserver/bin
- The latest version of the ArsDigita Community System
requires Tcl 8.3. Although this version of Tcl is included with
AOLserver 3.1, it is not activated by default. There is a
symbolic link pointing from
nsd to
nsd76 in /tmp/aolserver/bin. Change
this to point to nsd8x:
$ cd /usr/local/aolserver/bin
$ rm nsd
$ ln -s ./nsd8x ./nsd
- You will now test to ensure AOLserver is running correctly.
You should be able to cd into your aolserver directory and simply
start the server:
Login as nsadmin. (it helps to be in X at this point)
$ cd /usr/local/aolserver
$ ./bin/nsd -t nsd.tcl
As the AOLserver daemon starts up, you should see a few normal
warnings (listed below), which are safe to ignore. The first
warning means that the server is missing files for running
ssl, a necessary module for encrypted HTTPS. 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 and using either of these modules,
please see the AOLserver
documentation.
Warning: nsd.tcl: nsssl not loaded -- key/cert files do not exist.
Warning: nsd.tcl: nscp not loaded -- user/password is not set.
- Test to see if AOLserver is working by starting
Netscape or Lynx, and surfing over to your
web page:
$ 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/.
- Shutdown the test server:
$ 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 ACS documentation.
On to installing the ArsDigita Community System!
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:
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.
| Variable | Value | Reason |
|---|
| AOLserver Username | nsadmin | AOLserver used to be NaviServer
and this was the standard username for the server.
|
| AOLserver Directory | /usr/local/aolserver | When you use "make
install" AOLserver 3.1 will be installed here. Note that this is
different from previous versions of AOLserver; the change conforms to
Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) specifications.
|
| nsadmin Home Directory | /home/aol31 | The various files needed and generated by running AOLserver
3.1 processes should be located here, such as server .ini and log
files. This is described in depth in the next page of the install
guide.
|
| AOLserver Groups | nsadmin,web,dba | You should have a UNIX group for the server files, nsadmin,
and a group for the web content, web. Note that in order to connect
to Oracle using svrmgrl, your user must be part of the
dba group and this capability is needed to install the ACS.
|
| AOLserver Source Directory | /tmp/aolserver | This is simply a convenient
place to uncompress the source.
|
| ORACLE_HOME | /ora8/m01/app/oracle/product/8.1.6 | This is
the default Oracle installation directory.
|
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