Forum OpenACS Q&A: Installation Guide

Collapse
1: Installation Guide
Posted by David Bell on 05/13/03 04:09 AM
Hi everyone,
      I recently installed OpenAcs 4.6 by following the installation guides on the website. However when i came round to testing i got the following error

Request Error
Server startup failed: Error during bootstrapping

command "ns_db" is not enabled
    while executing
"ns_db pools"
    (procedure "db_bootstrap_set_db_type" line 72)
    invoked from within
"db_bootstrap_set_db_type database_problem"

I discovered this was due to the fact that the postgres.so
driver was mising form the aolserver/bin directory. I then downloaded the driver source, built and installed it and all was fixed. A friend of mine had the same problem when he followed the installation guide so i decided to write this post. I guess my questions are

1. Is there something I did wrong to get this problem
2. Is there a better way to solve this problem
3. Should this be documented in the installation guide

I am new to OpenACS so this might all sound really naive and sorry if it does.

Thanks in advance

David Bell

Collapse
2: Re: Installation Guide (response to 1)
Posted by Joel Aufrecht on 05/14/03 05:07 AM
This sounds like an out-of-sync problem, where you read one set of instructions and used a slightly different version of OpenACS or the supporting software.  So we should try to track that down and see if we can add hints.  Where did you go to get documentation (ie, from the web site, from the tarball)?  Exactly which url or version, if you can remember, did you use?
Collapse
3: Re: Installation Guide (response to 1)
Posted by David Bell on 05/14/03 05:27 AM
I got the documentation from the website at https://openacs.org/doc/openacs-4-6-2/unix-install.html, and i used the openacs-4-6.tgz tar ball downloaded from https://openacs.org/projects/openacs/download/download-verify?revision_id=69738
and aol server from
http://uptime.openacs.org/aolserver-openacs/aolserver3.3oacs1.tar.gz

Hope that helps

David

Collapse
4: Re: Installation Guide (response to 3)
Posted by Joel Aufrecht on 05/14/03 06:26 AM
mmm, yeah. You had the most recent docs (from 4.6.2) and the matching aolserver, but the tarball was 4.6. There's a line in config.tcl, which is derived from a file in the tarball, which references either postgres.so or nspostgres.so. The newest aolserver tarballs have switched from postgres.so to nspostgres.so, so you could also have solved the problem by changed config.tcl (which is actually called openacs4.tcl, I think, in earlier versions) instead of installing the new driver. In fact, you should try that anyway, because the new driver has better error reporting and will save you a lot of time rooting in the logs.

What could have been different on the site to point you in the direction of the newest tarball?

Collapse
5: Re: Installation Guide (response to 1)
Posted by David Bell on 05/14/03 06:39 AM
the tar ball i downloaded was linked to from within the documentation. i.e in the Openacs installation step 2.

"You should already have downloaded the OpenACS tarball to the /tmp directory. THIS LINK-->If noot, download the OpenACS tarball<--THIS LINK and save it in /tmp and proceed: "

So that is probably the link that is out of date. I will dload the newer version now.

Thanks and can I just say that I think its great that you have an interest in making it easy for people to get into OpenACS.

Dave

Collapse
6: Re: Installation Guide (response to 1)
Posted by Jade Rubick on 05/14/03 07:22 PM
Joel, I believe the documentation was linked to the wrong download.