Forum OpenACS Development: Install OpenACS on Debian with apt-get

I've tested this install on several systems and it makes the debian setup very easy:

# PostgreSQL
apt-get install postgresql postgresql-dev postgresql-doc
ln -s /usr/include/postgresql/ /usr/include/pgsql
ln -s /var/lib/postgres /usr/local/pgsql
ln -s /usr/include/pgsql /usr/local/pgsql/include
su postgres -c "/usr/lib/postgresql/bin/createlang plpgsql template1"
su postgres -c "createuser -a -d service1"
su postgres -c "createdb -E UNICODE service1"

# AOLServer
apt-get install aolserver4 aolserver4-nspostgres aolserver4-nssha1 aolserver4-nscache tdom

# OpenACS
useradd service1
groupadd web
mkdir /var/lib/aolserver
chown service1 /var/lib/aolserver
chgrp web /var/lib/aolserver
chmod 770 /var/lib/aolserver

su - service1
cd /tmp
wget https://openacs.org/projects/openacs/download/download/openacs-5.1.5.tar.gz
cd /var/lib/aolserver
tar xzf /tmp/openacs-5.1.5.tar.gz
mv /tmp/openacs-5.1.5 service1
chmod -R 755 service1
chown -R service1.web service1
exit

# Edit etc/config.tcl according to install docs

# Set openacs to start on boot

Hope this helps someone!

This is actually how I've been setting up AOLServer at IBR. It only works on Debian Sarge.

I followed your instructions for apt-get install aolserver4 but need more details on how to configure aolserver. The path is different from the current docs.

it installed at: /usr/lib/aolserver4
there was not log or /server/server1 folders so i created them and did chown and chmod on them
-------------------------
i edited the /usr/lib/aolserver4/bin/nsd-postgres to reflect the change from /usr/local/aolserver4 as follows:
#!/bin/bash

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/pgsql/bin
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/pgsql/lib:/usr/lib/aolserver4/lib

exec /usr/lib/aolserver4/bin/nsd $*
---------------------
I did the following:
cd /usr/lib/aolserver4/bin
cp /var/lib/aolserver/service1/packages/acs-core-docs/www/files/nsd-postgres.txt ./nsd-postgres
chmod 755 nsd-postgres
______________________________
I'm using the dotlrn-2.1.3.tar.gz instead of the openacs-5.1.5.tar.gz I wonder if there are some differences in the service1/packages/acs-core-docs/www/files/nsd-postgres.tx files?
--------------------------------
i did: exec /usr/lib/aolserver4/bin/nsd-postgres -it /var/lib/aolserver/service1/etc/config.tcl -u service1 -g web -b myipaddress:8000 (where myipaddress had the actual ipadrees) AND It started the aolserver...it let me configure a new instance...yeah!

i'm interested in any comments and suggestions.

Thanks a lot for this! I had a bear of a time compiling aolserver with the sarge version of debian-amd64 (the name of the distribution that works for amd64 processors as well as xeon's with 64 bit extensions). This made it trivial, which is very, very nice indeed.

People that care about security might want to add aolserver4-nsopenssl to their list of packages to install or run:

apt-get install aolserver4-nsopenssl

A note about the configuration that is different from the docs, since aolserver is installed in /usr/lib/aolserver4 you need to change:

• "homedir" in etc/config.tcl to /usr/lib/aolserver4
• when you move nsd-postgres you need to move it to /usr/lib/aolserver4/bin instead of /usr/local/aolserver/bin. You also need to change the last line of that file to:

  exec /usr/lib/aolserver4/bin/nsd $*
  

• If you use daemontools to keep aolserver alive you need to change etc/daemontools/run to exec /usr/lib/aolserver4/bin/nsd-postgres instead of exec /usr/local/aolserver/bin/nsd-postgres

Lastly, nslog attempts to create a ${homedir}/log/nspid.service1 the apt-get install does not create this log directory. So in order to remove those errors you should:

mkdir /usr/lib/aolserver4/log
chown root:web /usr/lib/aolserver4/log
chmod 775 /usr/lib/aolserver4/log

Nick: this looks interesting and I followed your directions but received this error:

$ runsvctrl up /service/service1
runsvctrl: warning: /service/service1: unable to open supervise/control: file does not exist

Am I missing a file somewhere? Thanks

The other problem could be a permission problem. You need to have root access to start the runit services.

Ryan as far as I know there is no boot script needed. It was fairly straightforward when I installed it on Ubuntu Breezy Badger.

That message looks like a daemontools message, and they aren't usually very helpful in general. You could try removing the "supervise" directory in openacs/etc/daemontools, and rebooting. I'm not sure if you had previously installed daemontools and that the supervise directories are incompatible between daemontools and runit.

Just found out that there is a script called runsvdir-start that is packaged with the runit deb package. If you execute the script it will start up runsvdir on the /var/service directory, which is created when you install runit using apt-get. So no need to create /service, just place the softlink of your openacs daemontools directory in /var/service.

Please be sure to update the above Wiki page with what you find out...

I actually still prefer to use daemontools, and will probably keep using it.

I use postfix over qmail as it is far easier to configure.