Installing OpenACS

There are many ways to get OpenACS working for you quickly and/or easily. See Try OpenACS for demonstrations and hosting solutions. In general, OpenACS can be installed with NaviServer or with AOLserver, which are two closely related servers. While NaviServer sees regular development, the AOLserver community is very conservative. Some of the guides below refer to AOLserver, some to NaviServer.

Packaged installations

For some platforms, a packaged version of OpenACS is available:

• Windows - Installing OpenACS on Windows
• Arch Linux - Installing OpenACS on Arch Linux
• Docker - Docker installation

Generic installation scripts

For many Linux platforms (e.g. Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora), one can use the generic installer that compiles all base components (using NaviServer) and creates users/groups as needed; which works with PostgreSQL 9.2 or newer. These install scripts can also be used on Mac OS X, when MacPorts are installed. These installer scripts are regularly updated.

• See: naviserver-openacs

The following alternative script installs AOLserver and the contained modules from sources. Using AOLserver for new OpenACS installations is NOT RECOMMENDED (last release 2011), but could be useful or necessary in certain contexts. It assumes, that PostgreSQL is already installed:

1. Install AOLserver: https://openacs.org/storage/view/aolserver/install.tgz
2. Install OpenACS: en:openacs-subsystem-install

Manually installing OpenACS:

In a productive environment, one may need to customize the installation further manually according to the needs, since the configuration options are fairly large, and only the common parts are covered by these scripts. We recommend using the script as reference in this case and adapt the installation steps according to your needs.