Annotation of doc/shortest_path_redhat7.2.txt, revision 1.3

1.3     ! harris41    1: $Id: shortest_path_redhat7.2.txt,v 1.2 2002/04/17 00:06:32 harris41 Exp $
1.1       harris41    2: 
                      3: INSTALLING LON-CAPA ON A REDHAT 7.2 SYSTEM
                      4: 
                      5: Scott Harrison
                      6: 
                      7: * Quick Instructions
                      8: * Support
                      9: * System Requirements
                     10: * Strategy
                     11: * Testing
                     12: * Acknowledgements
                     13: 
                     14: Quick Instructions
                     15: ------------------
                     16: 
1.3     ! harris41   17: PLEASE contact sharrison@mail.lon-capa.org if these instructions
1.1       harris41   18: do not work.
                     19: PLEASE subscribe yourself to the ANNOUNCE MAILING LIST!
                     20: Go to http://mail.lon-capa.org/mailman/listinfo/lon-capa-announce 
                     21: 
                     22: 1. Download http://install.lon-capa.org/versions/current/loncapa.tar.gz
                     23:    (from a linux terminal, type
                     24:     wget http://install.lon-capa.org/versions/current/loncapa.tar.gz)
                     25: 2. tar xzvf loncapa.tar.gz
                     26: 3. cd loncapa
                     27: 4. Read the README file (this file).
                     28: 5. EXECUTE: ./UPDATE
                     29: 6. EXECUTE: ./TEST
                     30: 
                     31: Please follow the instructions that are given
                     32: to you by the TEST command.  You will probably
                     33: have to make a few changes and continue to run
                     34: TEST until all the system-critical steps are
                     35: taken care of.
                     36: 
                     37: Support
                     38: -------
                     39: 
                     40: LON-CAPA is a GPL-based project which originally was, and in a
                     41: significant sense still is, located at Michigan State University.  
                     42: The installation, software versioning, and specification is
                     43: currently maintained by the freeware community which includes
1.2       harris41   44: the author of this document and more importantly you!
1.1       harris41   45: 
                     46: Your interest, questions and suggestions are enthusiastically
                     47: invited for the specific development of the GPL code.
                     48: 
                     49: We do our best to help get you started with a 100% operational
                     50: system.  Please e-mail harris41@msu.edu or helen@lon-capa.org
                     51: for help with software installation.
                     52: 
1.2       harris41   53: Hardware Recommendation
                     54: -----------------------
1.1       harris41   55: 
1.2       harris41   56: For full-time, classroom usage, an adequate LON-CAPA server
                     57: should be/have:
1.1       harris41   58: 
1.2       harris41   59: * a multiprocessor machine,
                     60: * a CPU speed of 1 gigahertz,
                     61: * a gigabyte of memory,
                     62: * and at least 40 to 80 gigabytes of hard disk space.
                     63: 
                     64: A lesser machine can be used for toying around with LON-CAPA
                     65: (LON-CAPA will run for a single user on most any machine).
                     66: 
                     67: LON-CAPA servers experience significant peaks of activity
                     68: before a homework submission deadline.  To support these critical
                     69: peaks of activity, it is strongly advised that LON-CAPA machines
                     70: fit the above recommendation.
1.1       harris41   71: 
                     72: If thousands of students start accessing the box as a web server...
1.2       harris41   73: well you may want to consider more options.  The design of the LON-CAPA
                     74: system is to naturally and transparently load-balance on multiple
                     75: computer clusters.  So, a simple solution for running an entire
                     76: college campus is to just have an adequate plurality of LON-CAPA
                     77: servers rather than a single, particularly monstrous server.
                     78: 
                     79: We like to think of high web server usage as "a good problem" though.. :)
                     80: 
                     81: More Information on Hardware and System Administration
                     82: ------------------------------------------------------
                     83: 
                     84: I find that LON-CAPA works nicely (for development purposes)
                     85: on a Pentium II, 20 gigabytes of hard-disk space, 256M RAM,
                     86: and 400MHz.  The consensus is though, that this may only
                     87: be adequate for a class of a dozen students. 
                     88: 
                     89: If you are making a serious investment, we suggest you
                     90: join our mailing list by visiting
                     91: http://mail.lon-capa.org/mailman/listinfo/lon-capa-users.
                     92: By posting to this mailing list, you can learn about what
                     93: solutions have worked for others.
                     94: 
                     95: LON-CAPA works on any Intel-based RedHat-compatible
                     96: hardware.  Unlike other software systems, it works
                     97: comparatively well on dusty old crippled machines without
                     98: much RAM or processing.
1.1       harris41   99: 
                    100: We support Linux OS.  LON-CAPA has been shown to work on Debian,
                    101: Mandrake, and RedHat.  Instructions are based on RedHat-centric
                    102: installs.  Given the current level of new LON-CAPA feature requests
                    103: and frequency of new software versions, we suggest that you stick
1.2       harris41  104: with RedHat to reduce high-frequency system administration overhead.
1.1       harris41  105: 
                    106: Strategy
                    107: --------
                    108: 
                    109: *** PERL ***
                    110: It is important to check and see if your system has all 
                    111: needed perl modules in /usr/lib/perl5/.
                    112: 
                    113: *** RPMS ***
                    114: It is important to:
                    115: * keep your RPMs up to date
                    116: * try to have a reasonably minimal set
                    117: 
                    118: *** MYSQL ***
                    119: It should be kept operational at all times.
                    120: In case of failure, there is a resynchronizing
                    121: strategy so that the data on the filesystem
                    122: continually refreshes the data within the
                    123: MYSQL database.
                    124: 
                    125: *** APACHE ***
                    126: LON-CAPA expects that conf/loncapa.conf will be the
                    127: last Apache configuration file to be processed before
                    128: launching the httpd server.  This may interfere
                    129: with other ways in which you utilize your web server.
                    130: For instance, LON-CAPA requires that httpd
                    131: run as user=www and group=www.
                    132: 
                    133: Testing
                    134: -------
                    135: 
                    136: 1. Perl
                    137: 
                    138: 2. MySQL
                    139: 
                    140: 3. Web Layer
                    141: 
                    142: 4. File Status
                    143: 
                    144: 5. RPM Status
                    145: 
                    146: Acknowledgements
                    147: ----------------
                    148: 
                    149: Many thanks to Matthew Hall (Michigan State University),
                    150: Guy Albertelli (Michigan State University), Felicia
                    151: Berryman (Michigan State University), Gerd Kortemeyer
                    152: (Michigan State University) and Martin Siegert (Simon
                    153: Frasier University) for their responsive feedback regarding
                    154: ideas in this document.
                    155: 

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