Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Help with openacs installing

35: Re: Help with openacs installing (response to 32)

Posted by Héctor Romojaro on 08/16/13 03:33 PM

Dear Gustaf and all,

I'm no longer using OpenACS at work, but I still maintain both openacs and dotlrn debian packages in my spare time, and your post hurted my feelings :)

Not responsible for the aolserver packages though, but i guess their maintainer reads this forum.

With that said, let see all the issues in detail:

- PG 9.1: The openacs package (5.7.0) is currently using "standard_conforming_strings = off" as a compatibility option in the openacs database to avoid the errors. It seemed to work fine, and I asked if there was any other change to do in the OCT list. I was told that using a more recent version of nspostgres would make the "standard_conforming_strings = off" unnecesary. IIRC, the nspostgres maintainer was asked about updating it (i think it was Stefan who asked him to), but, as it was never updated, i kept that option hoping it would be enough.

- Changes in head to support newer aolserver: I could include a patch in the package that modifies the openacs tarball and fix this but, at this point, i think the best solution is to package a new version of openacs (5.8) with proper pg9.x and aolserver compatibility.

Is there any estimation of when 5.8 will be *officially* out, with its static tarball in the download page? If the release is no near though, i'll go with the patch, but i think this is a way better solution.

However, we'll have to deal with the nspostgres issues. I'll try to contact its maintainer to see if he's willing to update it.

P.S: not the place to say it, but dotlrn packages has those and worse problems too. 2.5.0 is extremely old and, if no release is made soon, i fear for its continuity in the debian archive.

Kind regards,
Héctor Romojaro

36: Re: Help with openacs installing (response to 35)

Posted by Jim Lynch on 08/17/13 03:17 AM

Hector and the group,

openacs-5.7 doesn't like pg-9, it does like pg-8.3 and maybe also 8.4.

openacs-HEAD (which some are calling 5.8) does like pg-9.2. It's not released yet, and so far I can find no information on who's working on it, when it will be released or what its status is.

For your (and other's) convenience, I adjusted the build system of nspostgres so that you can supply the location of pg_config, and have the build use pg_config to find things, which I recommend. I was working with Dossy when I added this feature to the makefile. I carefully documented the build options in the makefile; please read for more info.

One place you can find pg_config is in the debian package postgresql-server-dev-x.y (where x.y is the postgres version), and then you will find pg_config in /usr/lib/postgresql/x.y/bin/pg_config.

I tend to recommend building the whole stack as you have and keep much more control: upgrading debian packages then have no chance of touching your web stack, and the prefix of just about everything can be set to the same place. I do like how the pg packages install and where it puts things, so it's been awhile since I last built pg.

Anyway, hope this helps and I'll probably contribute more to this thread later.

I thought I heard at one of the dotlrn meetings that the last dotlrn was about to be released, as MIT Sloan stopped using it. (can someone confirm this?)

-Jim

37: Re: Help with openacs installing (response to 35)

Posted by Jim Lynch on 08/17/13 03:20 AM

One more thing... Victor Guerra had been working on moving openacs to git; any progress here? (in the past, I would occasionally ask him to run a cvs->git import script he wrote.)

-Jim

38: Re: Help with openacs installing (response to 37)

Posted by Lester Temmink on 08/17/13 10:48 AM

Got it working on ubuntu 13.04 :) Tnx for all the support.

39: Re: Help with openacs installing (response to 38)

Posted by Lester Temmink on 08/17/13 11:46 AM

Im going to use OpenACS to monitor and configure modems, Which application is the best to do this?

40: Re: Help with openacs installing (response to 39)

Posted by Gustaf Neumann on 08/17/13 12:49 PM

Lester,

after this endless thread (thanks for keeping up) i got the impression that you got the wrong OpenACS (the community system/web framework, as in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenACS), but you are interested in http://sourceforge.net/projects/openacs/ (an implementation of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-069, a remote management and configuration server for network devices; ACS stands here for "auto configuration server"). Anyhow, many thanks, you made clear to me, how bad the state of the ubuntu/debian packages really is.

Jim, the scripts i added (see above) install OpenACS on Ubuntu/Fedora systems for PG 9.+ from scratch, including the updated postgres driver, tcl, tdom, xotcl, ..., using OpenACS, xo* and dotlrn from cvs and xowf from git, but using a packaged postgres version (on Ubuntu 9.1, on Fedora 9.2). We (mostly Victor and me) work in Vienna towards a 5.8 release, there is already a oacs-5-8 branch of OpenACS in CVS. Everybody is welcome to test it, and to contribute to the release.

As always, the release of the openacs-core packages comes first, then application packages. It is not clear yet, when and in which form a dotlrn release will come out (most dotlrn applications are substantially tailored sites, developed by busy people with not-so-much benefit from a new release).

Hope this helps
-gustaf neumann