Installing AOLServer 3.0

AOLServer is a fast, reliable, and scalable web server, and the server of choice for the ArsDigita Community System. For more information on AOLServer, you can read Philip Greenspun's introduction part 1 and part 2.

Table of Contents

1. Setup User Accounts and Paths
2. Download the distribution
3. Compile AOLServer
4. Compile the Oracle Driver
5. Install AOLServer
6. Troubleshooting the AOLServer Install
7. Appendix: Defaults

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Download the distribution.

• Download the AOLServer distribution and the Oracle driver (needed for db connectivity and the ACS. You must download the source distribution of AOLServer in order to compile the Oracle driver.
  • AOLServer 3.0 Source Distribution
    Do not download a binary!
  • Oracle Driver

  We recommend saving this archives in the /tmp directory.

• Uncompress the downloaded components (you may need to substitute different files names-- these were the files as of writing date):

  $ cd /tmp    {or wherever the archives are}
  $ tar -xzf aolserver3_0.tar.gz
  $ tar -xzf oracle-2.1.tar.gz
  

• You should have two directory trees in the current directory: aolserver3_0 and oracle. Move the oracle directory to make compiling the Oracle driver easier.

  $ mv oracle aolserver3_0
     

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Compile AOLServer

This step should be completed as the nsadmin user. You will compile the AOLServer distribution and prepare for install.

• Login as nsadmin and cd into the aolserver3_0 directory where you untarred the source. You should be able to compile out of the box.

  $ su - nsadmin
  ; Enter nsadmin password
  $ cd /tmp/aolserver3_0
  $ make all
  

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Compile the Oracle Driver

• Change directories to the aolserver3_0/oracle directory. and start the compilation.

  $ cd /tmp/aolserver3_0/oracle
  $ export NS_HOME=/tmp/aolserver3_0
  $ make all
  

  The following compiler warning may be ignored:

  ld: warning: type and size of dynamic symbol `sskgslgf' are not defined
  

  If the compilation failed, make sure the environment variables above actually point to where you installed the AOLServer source code. If you followed our instructions, this should not be a problem. You can check the directories by doing

  $ ls /tmp/aolserer3_0/include
  

  If you don't see any files, then you have the wrong directories. Verify your installation of Oracle and AOLServer and try again. If compilation was successful, you should now have two files, ora8.so and ora8cass.so.

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Install AOLServer 3.0

You are now ready to install AOLServer.

• Change directories to your AOLServer source distribution.

• Run make install to install the files.

   
  $ cd /tmp/aolserver3_0
  $ make install
  

• You should now have a /tmp/aolserver directory with the binary distribution. Copy the Oracle drivers into it.

  $ cp oracle/ora8.so /tmp/aolserver/bin
  $ cp oracle/ora8cass.so /tmp/aolserver/bin
  

• The latest version of the ArsDigita Community System requires Tcl 8.3. Although this version of Tcl is included with AOLServer 3.0, it is not activated by default. There is a symbolic link pointing from nsd to nsd76 in /tmp/aolserver/bin. Change this to point to nsd8x.

  $ rm /tmp/aolserver/bin/nsd
  $ cd /tmp/aolserver/bin
  $ ln -s ./nsd8x ./nsd
  

• Finally, copy the distribution to the home/aol30 directory.

  $ cp -a /tmp/aolserver/* /home/aol30
  

• You will now test to make sure AOLServer is running correctly. You should be able to cd into your aolserver directory and simply start the server.

  Login as nsadmin. (it helps to be in X at this point)
  $ cd /home/aol30
  $ ./bin/nsd -t nsd.tcl
  

  You should see a few normal warnings. They are safe to ignore. The first warning means that the server is missing files for running ssl, a necessary module for encrypted HTTPS. The second warning means that the AOLServer control panel, a special module for administering AOLServer could not be loaded. If you're interested in configuring either of these modules, please see the AOLServer documentation.

  Warning: nsd.tcl: nsssl not loaded because key/cert files do not exist 
  Warning: nsd.tcl: nscp not loaded because user/password is not set. 
  

• Test to see if this worked by starting netscape or lynx, and surfing over to your web page.

  $ lynx localhost:8000
  

  You should see a Welcome to AOLServer 3 page. If this doesn't work, try http://127.0.0.1:8000/.

• Shutdown the test server.

  $ killall nsd
  

  The killall command will kill all processes with the name nsd. Clearly this is not a good tool to use for managing your services in general. We cover that in the ACS documentation.

That's it. On to the ArsDigita Community System!

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Troubleshooting the AOLServer Install

If you can't view the welcome page, there is a problem with your server configuration. Start by viewing your AOLServer log, which is in /home/aol30/log/server.log. You should also try to find lines of the form:

[01/Jun/2000:12:11:20][5914.2051][-nssock-] Notice: nssock: listening on http://localhost.localdomain:8000 (127.0.0.1:8000)
[01/Jun/2000:12:11:20][5914.2051][-nssock-] Notice: accepting connections

Appendix: Defaults

Variable	Value	Reason
AOLServer Username	nsadmin	AOLServer used to be NaviServer and this was the standard username for the server.
AOLServer Directory	/home/aol30	AOLServer 3.0 should be installed to its own home directory and it is simplest if this is the home directory of the nsadmin user and is version specific in case you upgrade your web browser.
AOLServer Groups	nsadmin,web,dba	You should have a group for the server files, nsadmin, and a group for the web content, web. In order to connect to Oracle using svrmgrl, your user must be part of the dba group and this capability is needed to install the ACS.
AOLServer Source Directory	/tmp/aolserver3_0	This is simply a convenient place to uncompress the source.
ORACLE_HOME	/ora8/m01/app/oracle/product/8.1.6	This is the default Oracle installation directory.
NS_HOME	/tmp/aolserver3_0	This is where the source files are.