Forum OpenACS Q&A: OpenACS Default TCP port - 8000 or 8001 or ?

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1: OpenACS Default TCP port - 8000 or 8001 or ?
Posted by Jonathan Marsden on 05/05/01 02:13 AM
Currently the AOLserver RPMs I create set the default server TCP port
to 8000, which many folks seem to use.

However, it turns out that some other popular tools choose 8000 as
well, including junkbuster.

Should we make the OpenACS (really AOLserver) default port be 8000,
8001, or some other number?

Obviously by the time you have configured a real OpenACS site,
changing the port in nsd.tcl will be childs play.  This issue is
simply for newcomers, trying to help them quickly see a "working"
OpenACS on their machine.

I'm leaving it as 8000 for now, but would welcome thoughts and
suggestions on how best to handle this.

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2: Response to OpenACS Default TCP port - 8000 or 8001 or ? (response to 1)
Posted by Pascal Scheffers on 05/05/01 10:27 PM
I've seen 81, 8000, 8080 as 'standard' alternatives for port 80. It's probably best to stick with 8000 or 8080. I know RPMs are usually very quite, but you could include a small script that tries to conenct to 8000 and 8080, takes which ever port is free and outputs a line to stderr with a notice of which it chose (if it's different from the default/documented).

I have no idea of how 'un-RPM'-style this is. Since the number of parameters to configure is very small, a small after-install script that allows you to alter the defaults would be very nice to have.

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3: Response to OpenACS Default TCP port - 8000 or 8001 or ? (response to 1)
Posted by Jonathan Marsden on 05/06/01 06:16 PM
On RH machines, 80 is used by Apache, 8000 is used by JunkBuster, 8080
is used by Squid...

Junkbuster is not actually distributed on the main RH CDs themselves,
so it is probably the "least bad" conflict of the three. At least,
that's my current thinking.

I like the idea of a script to set this, it's pretty trivial to do.
Aside from the port number, which other nsd.tcl parameters do
people often find a need to change in the early (beginner) stages of
using AOLserver + OpenACS?

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4: Response to OpenACS Default TCP port - 8000 or 8001 or ? (response to 1)
Posted by Pascal Scheffers on 05/06/01 08:34 PM
I think the only thing to change in nsd.tcl is the portnumber. In
parameters/server.tcl the numbero uno parameter I always change is
the 'SystemOwner' email address - so all the errors are reported to
my mailbox. That's about it, I think.
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5: Response to OpenACS Default TCP port - 8000 or 8001 or ? (response to 1)
Posted by Julie Bernstein on 05/08/01 07:33 PM
The pageroot and library paramaters are important to get right in
nsd.tcl also, if you're not using the default root of /web.
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6: Response to OpenACS Default TCP port - 8000 or 8001 or ? (response to 1)
Posted by Jonathan Marsden on 05/10/01 07:24 PM
OK. In my OpenACS RPMs and in the OpenACS 3.2.5 tarball, SystemOwner is now set to root@[ns_info hostname] which will be correct for many systems without editing.

The pageroot etc are likewise preset to things that RPM users will probably not be interested in changing (or if they are, they will want to become familiar with the config files anyway).

So a script called say aolserverport that reports what the port is if called with no parameter, and sets it if called with a numeric parameter, seems called for. I'll see what I can come up with.