The Hitchhiker's Guide to the ACS

by Bryan Quinn, Adam Farkas, Doug Hoffman, Hiroyoshi Iwashima, Ryan Lee and Ravi Jasuja,

Table of Contents

Hardware Requirements

Installing RedHat Linux 6.2

This is not intended to be a full set of information on the installation of RedHat Linux. For full information, consult the RedHat documentation.

  1. Start the Installation

    You have the following options:

  2. Boot your computer

    To begin the installation process, insert your boot media and boot your computer. RedHat should load and will present you with a LILO prompt. Read the instructions, but it should be safe to press enter unless you have unusual hardware. The RedHat kernel will then load and the installation program will start. You will need to inform the installation program of what kind of media you are installing from (CDROM or network).

  3. Select Installation Type

    You need to specify a Custom installation type in order to ensure you get all of the necessary packages.

  4. Partition your drives

    Production linux servers require careful configuration of partitions in order to optimize performance. Such reccomendations are beyond the scope of this document. A simple configuration for a simple drive is
    Partition NameSizeDescription
    /boot15 MStores the kernel and basic boot configuration.
    /3000+ MStores the major part of the file system.
    <swap>2x RAM or 256 Mb (whichever is smaller) Virtual memory

  5. Select packages for installation

    The following packages, at a minimum, should be installed. Feel free to install above and beyond this. Also, you may choose to individually select packages. It is not necessary to do this, but you may do this to add files to the distribution. You should not remove any of these packages. You can also install RPMs post-installation, so don't feel too concerned about this phase.
    PackageDescriptionWhy You Need This
    Printer SupportAllows you to printIf you ever want to print anything.
    X WindowsGraphical system for UNIXNeeded for Oracle installation.
    GNOMEX Window Manager and GUINeeded to run X properly
    Mail/WWW/ToolsTools for checking mail, accessing the web.Basic user programs.
    Networked WorkstationBasic tools for configuring networking. Neccessary for server programs.
    Anonymous FTPA FTP serverUseful for serving files to the world.
    EmacsThe Ultimate Text Editor.Necessary for anything.
    DevelopmentBasic compilers and scripting languages. Needed to compile AOLServer and various other programs.
    Kernel DevelopmentSource for the Linux kernel.Necessary for recompiling.
    UtilitiesBasic utilities for Linux.Neccesary for accessing the system.

  6. Configure users

    Set a password for root. You do not need to add any more users at this time.

  7. Configure boot device

    In order to boot your workstation, you either need to install LILO or have a bootdisk. The LILO option is reccomended. LILO (LInuxLOader) writes some data to your hard drives MBR which allows the computer to find the operating system. It is possible to configure LILO to boot multiple OSes. Check the LILO documentation for more information. We reccomend creating an emergency boot disk and installing LILO.

  8. Configure networking

    RedHat should automatically detect your network card. You will need to enter in your networking information or select DHCP. DHCP will automatically configure your networking, but your network must have a DHCP server already installed and running.

  9. Configure X

    RedHat should automatically detect your graphics card. You can configure your system to use a graphical login, but this is not necessary for a production system. If your monitor is not listed, select a "Generic" or "Generic Multisync monitor."

  10. Copy Files

    At this point, sit back while RedHat copies itself over.

  11. Post Install

Installing Oracle 8.1.6

  1. Acquire Oracle 8.1.6 Enterprise Edition for Linux

  2. Things to Keep in Mind

    Throughout these instructions, we will refer to a service name or SID of ora8. You may choose to customize this. If so, change any reference to ora8 excluding pathnames to your customized name. If you are confused by this, stick to using ora8.

  3. Pre-Install Tasks

    Though Oracle 8.1.6 has an automated installer, we still need to perform several manual, administrative tasks before we can launch it. You must perform all of these steps as the root user.

  4. Set up the Oracle user's Environment

  5. Oracle Install

  6. Creating a Database

  7. Testing Your New Database

    Did it work? Now's the time to find out.

  8. Automating Startup & Shutdown

    You will want to automate the database startup and shutdown process. It's probably best to have Oracle spring to life when you boot up your machine.

  9. Test the automation

    Reboot your computer and ensure that Oracle starts automatically by starting sqlplus. If it works, then your Oracle installation is complete.

Installing AOLServer 3.0

Configuring AOLServer

The ACS Installation Documentation reccomends creating a chrooted environment for configuring AOLServer. However, no configuration information is given about how to create this directory. This would be useful.

AOLServer can be configued with two different configuration files: nsd.tcl and nsd.ini. By default, nsd.tcl is used. However, the ACS uses a special file, parameters.ini for its own configuration. In order to use this file, you need to be using nsd.ini. By default, AOLServer comes with nsd.tcl, but you can translate this: from the aol3 directory, run bin/translate-tcl nsd.ini.
CHECK THIS: does parameters.ini work with nsd.tcl?

If you use nsd.ini, make sure that the home directory is properly set, or AOLServer will not work. Edit nsd.ini, and set

home=/webroot/aol3

You should also comment out all references to nsssl.

Test to make sure your installation is running. bin/nsd -fc nsd.ini -s server1. Surf over to localhost:8000, and make sure you can see the page.

Installing Monitors

(note: Cassandracle and Cassandrix untar to directories named cassandracle and cassandrix. This is convenient for installation purposes. MTA Montior untars to /www/mmon. It should untar to /mmon.)

Installing Oracle

Create user oracle (primary GID oinstall, secondary dba) Untar the archive. Cd to /OracleRi2 Type ./runInstaller. File Locations: Source (automatically set)
Destination /ora8/m01 OraInventory /ora8/.oraInventory Database directory /ora8/m02 Set Install group to oinstall Typical Installation. Name your database. This name is used for accessing the db from oracle tools. You need a service name and a system identifier: SID. The service name should be a database name and your domain. For instance, we used chaos.arsdigita.com. This gives us a SID of chaos. Wait. A database will be created for you with two accounts: SYS, change_on_install (lucky2) SYSTEM, manager (lucky) Post-install Edit the init-scripts for your shell (e.g. .bashrc) and set the (supposedly optional) ORACLE_BASE and ORACLE_HOME environment variables.
ORACLE_BASE=/ora8/m01
ORACLE_HOME=/ora8/m01
ORACLE_SID=SID
Moving on to http://www.arsdigita.com/doc/architecture-install.html and http://www.arsdigita.com/doc/installation.html Architecture install has a legacy print-out of Oracle data files. Find where the tablespaces are stored SVRMGR> select file_name from dba_data_files; Example results: /ora8/m01/app/oracle/oradata/ora8/system01.dbf /ora8/m01/app/oracle/oradata/ora8/oemrep01.dbf /ora8/m01/app/oracle/oradata/ora8/rbs01.dbf /ora8/m01/app/oracle/oradata/ora8/temp01.dbf /ora8/m01/app/oracle/oradata/ora8/users01.dbf /ora8/m01/app/oracle/oradata/ora8/indx01.dbf /ora8/m01/app/oracle/oradata/ora8/drsys01.dbf /ora8/m02/oradata/ora8/jsc01.dbf (misleading!) A fresh installation looks like this: SVRMGR> select file_name from dba_data_files; FILE_NAME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /ora8/m01/oradata/order/tools01.dbf /ora8/m01/oradata/order/drsys01.dbf /ora8/m01/oradata/order/users01.dbf /ora8/m01/oradata/order/indx01.dbf /ora8/m01/oradata/order/rbs01.dbf /ora8/m01/oradata/order/temp01.dbf /ora8/m01/oradata/order/system01.dbf 7 rows selected. Export and Import *must* be done from svrmgrl. This is not specified in the documentation. For the export-oracle script, all instances of 'app/oracle/product/8.1.5/' should be deleted.

Installing the ACS

When configuring service-name.ini, delete the [ns/setup] section. This was only for AOLServer 2.3.3. Must set a Port for the [ns/server/service_name/module/nssock] nscache.so is also deprecated. When compiling Oracle driver, one usually gets the warning
ld: warning: type and size of dynamic symbol `sskgslgf' are not defined
This should be more prominently documented. Provide documentation for [ns/parameters] in nsd.ini. Include instructions to update the webserver user's LD_LIBRARY_PATH with the $ORACLE_HOME/lib ArsDigita Server installation references 'nsd-oracle' which is deprecated. Keepalive installation instructions references a 'restart-aolserver' script which we could not find on the web, but had from bootcamp. Knowing where nsd-oracle is would help a lot.

Setting up Glassroom

Exactly what must one do?

Setting up Monitors

ad-utilities-preload.tcl should be included with KeepAlive, WatchDog, etc. Watchdog needs better setup instructions. Glassroom needs better setup instructions.

Using CVS

Other Installation Documents