LON-CAPA Installation

Current Installation Procedure

Scott Harrison

Last updated: 11/21/2000

This is the current list of steps to support LON-CAPA installation. These steps have been tested.

1. Get Redhat 6.2 on a CD by
   • Using a RedHat 6.2 CD
   • Downloading a RedHat 6.2 CD image and burning a CD
   • Or, alternatively do a network install from a RedHat 6.2 CD source tree. You need to burn a boot floppy disk with a network boot image; bootnet-20000407.img. (Download the image file; insert a blank floppy disk; and type a command similar to: dd if=bootnet-20000407.img of=/dev/fd0). For installation, you need to specify hobbes.lite.msu.edu/~loninst as your download URL, and /3.1/currentcdsource as the source location.
2. Install RedHat 6.2
   • Important: Do a "GNOME Workstation Install" and go with their default list of packages
   • Important: Make sure you add a user "www"

   After installation, restart the computer. Login as root. Enter these two commands:

   1. lynx -source http://install.lon-capa.org/3.1/scripts/postinstall.pl>postinstall.pl
   2. perl postinstall.pl

   As postinstall.pl runs, you will be asked various questions. Follow the instructions to correctly enter in the appropriate parameter values.

   ---

   Old steps; do not use these...

   Last updated: 11/01/2000

   This is the current list of steps to support LON-CAPA installation. These steps have been tested.

   1. Get Redhat 6.2 on a CD by
      • Using a RedHat 6.2 CD
      • Downloading a RedHat 6.2 CD image and burning a CD
      • Or, alternatively do a network install from a RedHat 6.2 CD source tree. You need to burn a boot floppy disk with a network boot image; bootnet-20000407.img. (Download the image file; insert a blank floppy disk; and type a command similar to: dd if=bootnet-20000407.img of=/dev/fd0). For installation, you need to specify hobbes.lite.msu.edu/~loninst as your download URL, and /3.1/currentcdsource as the source location.
   2. Install RedHat 6.2
      • Important: Do a "GNOME Workstation Install" and go with their default list of packages
      • Important: Make sure you add a user "www"
   3. After installation, install extra RPMs/upgrades by downloading all files from http://install.lon-capa.org/3.1/SupplementalRPMS.
      • Use this command to install the RPMs you download: rpm -Uvh --force *.rpm.
   4. Remove extra RPMs by downloading and running the script http://install.lon-capa.org/3.1/scripts/remove_extra.sh as root.
   5. After installing the supplemental RPMS, install a final RPM set by downloading all files from http://install.lon-capa.org/3.1/FinalRPMS.
      • Use this command to install the RPMs you download: rpm -Uvh --force *.rpm.
   6. Configure needed files.
      • Currently, reconfiguration must be handled manually and involves an administrator altering configuration files present throughout the system. For a list of these files and their descriptions, visit http://install.lon-capa.org/3.1/loncapafiles/loncapafiles.html.
   7. Important files are /etc/httpd/conf/access.conf, /etc/ntp.conf, /etc/krb.conf, /home/httpd/lonTabs/spare.tab, /home/httpd/lonTabs/hosts.tab (if setting up a cluster different than MSU's).
   8. Unshadow passwords

      You can do this by these 5 steps:
      1. enter the system command, as "root", pwunconv
      2. enter the system command, as "root", grpunconv
      3. Set the following to be the /etc/pam.d/login file on your system
      #%PAM-1.0
      auth       required     /lib/security/pam_securetty.so
      auth       required     /lib/security/pam_pwdb.so shadow nullok
      auth       required     /lib/security/pam_nologin.so
      account    required     /lib/security/pam_pwdb.so
      password   required     /lib/security/pam_cracklib.so
      password   required     /lib/security/pam_pwdb.so nullok use_authtok
      session    required     /lib/security/pam_pwdb.so
      session    optional     /lib/security/pam_console.so
      4. Set the following to be the /etc/pam.d/passwd file on your system
      #%PAM-1.0
      auth       required     /lib/security/pam_pwdb.so shadow nullok
      account    required     /lib/security/pam_pwdb.so
      password   required     /lib/security/pam_cracklib.so retry=3
      password   required     /lib/security/pam_pwdb.so use_authtok nullok
      5. Set/reset passwords.  As "root" use 'passwd', and 'passwd www'
      to change the important passwords.  This creates crypt-processible
      passwords in /etc/passwd.
      

   9. Run, as root, ln -s /etc/mime.types /etc/httpd/conf/mime.types
   10. Run, as root, /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd start.
   11. Run, as root, /etc/rc.d/init.d/loncontrol start.
   12. After 10 minutes, you should be able to check the file /home/httpd/html/lon-status/index.html to see if your machine has been successfully set up.

   Future Installation Procedure (not yet implemented)

   In the future, LON-CAPA Installation will be distributed on a CD complete with a customized interface. Many elements for doing this have been coded, and are in place, but it awaits completion.