File:  [LON-CAPA] / doc / Attic / shortest_path_redhat7.2.txt
Revision 1.2: download - view: text, annotated - select for diffs
Wed Apr 17 00:06:32 2002 UTC (21 years, 11 months ago) by harris41
Branches: MAIN
CVS tags: HEAD
updating brief description of hardware and operating system

    1: $Id: shortest_path_redhat7.2.txt,v 1.2 2002/04/17 00:06:32 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 author of this document 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: Hardware Recommendation
   54: -----------------------
   55: 
   56: For full-time, classroom usage, an adequate LON-CAPA server
   57: should be/have:
   58: 
   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.
   71: 
   72: If thousands of students start accessing the box as a web server...
   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.
   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
  104: with RedHat to reduce high-frequency system administration overhead.
  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: 

FreeBSD-CVSweb <freebsd-cvsweb@FreeBSD.org>