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a quick painless path for installing LON-CAPA on redhat 7.2

    1: $Id: shortest_path_redhat7.2.txt,v 1.1 2002/03/15 16:09:12 harris41 Exp $
    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: 
   17: PLEASE contact harris41@msu.edu if these instructions
   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
   44: the document author and more importantly you!
   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: 
   53: System Requirements
   54: -------------------
   55: 
   56: It should be an intermediate-to-high-level
   57: performance workstation computer.  A ballpark suggestion
   58: is that it is PentiumII or greater, has 20 gigabytes of
   59: harddisk space, 256M RAM, and 400MHz CPU processing speed...
   60: Dr. Kortemeyer at Michigan State University can give a more
   61: thorough response if needed (he has experience with setting
   62: up high-performance web server clusters).
   63: 
   64: A specifically high-level suggestion is a multi CPU machine
   65: (with a CPU speed of 1 gigahertz), a gigabyte of memory and
   66: at least 40 to 80 gigabytes of hard disk space.
   67: 
   68: You can use a lesser machine for toying around with LON-CAPA (It will
   69: install an run for a single user on most anymachine) but if you wish
   70: to support students and you wish to support deadline crunches my
   71: suggestion is to go with the above.
   72: 
   73: LON-CAPA will work on any Intel-based RedHat compatible
   74: hardware.  And, unlike other software systems, it works
   75: comparatively well on dusty old crippled machines without
   76: much RAM or processing.  I am just projecting the characteristics
   77: that make LON-CAPA nice to use without any unreasonable slowness,
   78: and in terms of hard disk space, how to make it at least 5 years
   79: down the road, if not more.
   80: 
   81: If thousands of students start accessing the box as a web server...
   82: well you may want to consider more options (LON-CAPA supports
   83: load-balancing on multiple computers for instance).  We like
   84: to think of high web server usage as "a good problem" though.. :)
   85: 
   86: We support Linux OS.  LON-CAPA has been shown to work on Debian,
   87: Mandrake, and RedHat.  Instructions are based on RedHat-centric
   88: installs.  Given the current level of new LON-CAPA feature requests
   89: and frequency of new software versions, we suggest that you stick
   90: with RedHat to reduce high frequency system administration overhead.
   91: 
   92: Strategy
   93: --------
   94: 
   95: *** PERL ***
   96: It is important to check and see if your system has all 
   97: needed perl modules in /usr/lib/perl5/.
   98: 
   99: *** RPMS ***
  100: It is important to:
  101: * keep your RPMs up to date
  102: * try to have a reasonably minimal set
  103: 
  104: *** MYSQL ***
  105: It should be kept operational at all times.
  106: In case of failure, there is a resynchronizing
  107: strategy so that the data on the filesystem
  108: continually refreshes the data within the
  109: MYSQL database.
  110: 
  111: *** APACHE ***
  112: LON-CAPA expects that conf/loncapa.conf will be the
  113: last Apache configuration file to be processed before
  114: launching the httpd server.  This may interfere
  115: with other ways in which you utilize your web server.
  116: For instance, LON-CAPA requires that httpd
  117: run as user=www and group=www.
  118: 
  119: Testing
  120: -------
  121: 
  122: 1. Perl
  123: 
  124: 2. MySQL
  125: 
  126: 3. Web Layer
  127: 
  128: 4. File Status
  129: 
  130: 5. RPM Status
  131: 
  132: Acknowledgements
  133: ----------------
  134: 
  135: Many thanks to Matthew Hall (Michigan State University),
  136: Guy Albertelli (Michigan State University), Felicia
  137: Berryman (Michigan State University), Gerd Kortemeyer
  138: (Michigan State University) and Martin Siegert (Simon
  139: Frasier University) for their responsive feedback regarding
  140: ideas in this document.
  141: