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:
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