Forum OpenACS Development: New Installation Question

I assume that the instructions are for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition as I could not find the version that was stated in the instructions.

You are perfectly right, I confused the version numbers. I corrected them ... you did fine.

The instruction ended with postgres installation so I continued installment with item 3 on Debian instructions with no .lrn installation.

Again, you assumed correctly. I fixed this in the instructions.

All installed fine, however, when pulling up web page, I got the standard message that indicates the database is not up.

I can confirm the issue. I wrote up an email to the package maintainer and I hope he will be on-top of it soon.

I figured I must have entered something that conflicted during the prompts so I reinstalled Ubuntu and went through the installation script again and kept all default values. Installation was successful.

generally speaking, you do not have to reinstall the entire system. it is perfectly sufficient to remove the packages.

aptitude remove openacs (for instance)

in the meantime, if you are willing to commit a work-around:

1. re-install the package
2. in the data base set-up dialogue, provide the following information
db_host 127.0.0.1
db_port 5432

make sure you create a db user and provide a password.

3. now, you need to edit a file: /etc/openacs/config.tcl

look for the following entries ...

'ns_param password ""'

... and change them to ...

'ns_param password $db_password'

4. kill the aolserver process: killall aolserver4-nsd
5. restart: /etc/init.d/openacs start

you should be fine then ...

//stefan

First of all, thanks for testing the debian/ubuntu packages.

I've re-tested the install on a ubuntu hardy system, and I'm getting the same error than you:

-----------------
* Starting web server aolserver4 /usr/sbin/aolserver4-nsd: error while loading shared libraries: libnsd.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
-----------------

...and then all the packages (aolserver4-*, openacs, ...) fail to install.

The problem is from the package aolserver4, which starts the daemon before doing the ldconfig, and gives the error of "cannot open shared ...".

-----------------
/usr/sbin/aolserver4-nsd: error while loading shared libraries: libnsd.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[...]
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
-----------------

As you can see, the shared libraries are finded properly after that:

# ldd /usr/sbin/aolserver4-nsd
linux-gate.so.1 => (0xb7fab000)
libnsd.so => /usr/lib/aolserver4/lib/libnsd.so (0xb7f3a000)
libnsthread.so => /usr/lib/aolserver4/lib/libnsthread.so (0xb7f32000)
libtcl8.4.so.0 => /usr/lib/libtcl8.4.so.0 (0xb7e7d000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0xb7e79000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0 (0xb7e61000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libm.so.6 (0xb7e3c000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb7e31000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xb7ce2000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7fac000)

So you can go ahead again with the install, doing apt-get install openacs (or dotlrn). From your post, I think aptitude is doing it automagically 😉

After that, you will find another error from the aolserver4 package:

-------------------
Fatal: log: failed to open server log '/var/log/aolserver4/aolserver4.log': 'Permission denied'
-------------------

aolserver4 package is not setting properly the permissions on their own log directory before launching the daemon (similar error than the first one), but the installing of the other packages finish properly.

After all, if you entered the correct values on the openacs|dotlrn install, you'll have a running instance on your server's http://localhost:8000 😊

If you're not getting any dialogue at the install, you didn't "purge" the packages before the install. I mean, you removed the packages (aolserver4, openacs...), but not the config files, including the data acquired from the previous configuration dialogs.

To fix it (and all your installation problems, i think), just do:

# dpkg --purge openacs
# apt-get install openacs --reinstall

After that, answer the questions of the installer (if you haven't changed your postgresql configuration, pressing enter on all the questions will work), and open a browser window on http://localhost:8000 to start the datamodel creation 😊

-- Héctor

generally speaking, you do not have to reinstall the entire system. it is perfectly sufficient to remove the packages.
aptitude remove openacs (for instance)

FYI, on Debian (and Ubuntu) if you've messed something up and want to start again, you should purge packages instead of removing... "remove" leaves configuration files behind in case you want to reinstall at some stage, but if your configuration is broken this isn't what you want... "purge" will remove every trace of a package that apt is aware of...

aptitude purge openacs

(not actually required in this case, but a general apt tip)

If you get the same error, you should try starting up the postgresql backend. It might be done with something like this:
sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql start

sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql-8.3 start

And since you're using version 8.3, I'm fairly certain you'll need to use port 5433 in your config file (and possibly specifiy -p 5433 when calling psql/createuser/createdb later on.)

I'm not a wizard when it comes to configuring PostgreSQL on Debian, so you should have a look in the OpenACS install guide. A few quick pointers though:

createuser creates a role or a user for accessing the database.
createdb reate a new database
psql accesses that database.

As a general rule you should never, ever call these three with sudo; instead create a postgresql user for yourself using createuser. This is usually done like this:

sudo su - postgres
createuser -p 5433 <yourusername>
exit

Now, as yourself create a database:

createdb -p 5433 openacs

Now, finally you'll be able to connect o the newly created database:

psql -p 5433 openacs

After the database is create and running, you'll be able to start up openacs for the first time and do the installation.

Again, all of this is pretty well specified in the OpenACS Installation Guide or in any primer to PotsgreSQL so you would benefit from looking there.


[13/Sep/2008:16:03:40][11244.3083901120][-main-] Notice: Database API: Default database (dbn) is: 'default'
[13/Sep/2008:16:03:40][11244.3083901120][-main-] Notice: Database API: Using ALL database pools for OpenACS.
[13/Sep/2008:16:03:40][11244.3083901120][-main-] Notice: Database API: The following pools are available for OpenACS: pool2 pool3 pool1
[13/Sep/2008:16:03:40][11244.3083901120][-main-] Notice: dbdrv: opening database 'postgres:localhost:5432:openacs'
[13/Sep/2008:16:03:40][11244.3083901120][-main-] Notice: Opening openacs on localhost
[13/Sep/2008:16:03:40][11244.3083901120][-main-] Error: Ns_PgOpenDb(postgres): Could not connect to localhost:5432:openacs: FATAL: Ident authentication fa\
iled for user "foo"

[13/Sep/2008:16:03:40][11244.3083901120][-main-] Error: dbdrv: failed to open database 'postgres:localhost:5432:openacs'
[13/Sep/2008:16:03:40][11244.3083901120][-main-] Warning: Database API: couldn't allocate a handle from database pool "pool2".
[13/Sep/2008:16:03:40][11244.3083901120][-main-] Error: Database API: RDBMS type could not be determined for any pool.

sudo emacs /etc/init.d/openacs (changed user from www-data to foo)
sudo chown -R foo:www-data /usr/share/openacs
sudo chmod -R ug+rw /usr/share/openacs

Does anyone know how to set another instance on the same server?

---rer

I've just fixed some things on dotlrn and openacs debian packages:

- Postgresql and daemontools are now "Suggested" dependencies instead of "Recommends", to avoid problems with aptitude.
- The installer grants access permissions on postgresql's pg_hba.conf automatically if the user wants to (only if postgresql is installed on localhost).
- Fixed some issues with dpkg-reconfigure.

Purging previous packages is recommended before installing the new ones. To purge and install:

# sudo apt-get clean
# sudo apt-get update
# sudo apt-get remove openacs | dotlrn --purge
# sudo apt-get install openacs | dotlrn

The database is not dropped on purge, so don't be afraid of doing it :)

Cheers, Héctor