#!perl -w
# run this document through perl to check its syntax
use Pod::Checker;
podchecker(\*DATA);
__END__

=head1 NAME

INSTALL - Slash Installation

=head1 SYNOPSIS

This document describes how to install Slash 2.2.  For instructions on
installation or upgrade of previous versions of Slash, see the INSTALL
document included with those distributions.

These instructions have only been tested on Linux. Installation under
BSD and other Unix OSes should work similarly, but there are problems
with the Makefile and installtion under some non-Linux OSes.  Feel free
to submit bug reports (better, patches) for any such problems.
We've had reports of the 1.0.x version of Slash running on Windows,
but have done no testing and have no further information, and have no
information about Slash 2 running on Windows.

PostgreSQL support in Slash 2 is currently alpha-quality.

Slash can always be downloaded from SourceForge.net, from the FTP site,
and via CVS.

	http://sf.net/projects/slashcode/
	ftp://ftp.slashcode.com//pub/slashcode/
	http://cvs.slashcode.com/

See the SourceForge.net page for patches and bug reports.


=head2 Important Note

The software and hardware requirements are listed at the end of the
document, because we know you want to get right into the installation.
Please read those requirements if you have B<any> question about
what might be required.

Upgrading information is also toward the end of the document.


=head1 INSTALLATION

=head2 Installation Notes

=over 4

=item *

For slashd (see F<utils/slash>, which starts slashd),
mod_perl (see F<httpd/httpd.conf>), and MySQL, we set all processes
to run in GMT.  Then it is easy to convert dates to whatever the
user's local time is.  If you have date offset problems, check that all of
these are properly set to run in GMT.

=item *

You cannot have different versions of the Slash modules installed for
different sites on the same Apache server.  Well, if you want to, you
can try the Apache::PerlVINC module, but this is B<not> recommended for
performance reasons. Slash is designed to have one shared core of code
for all Slash sites on a system.  (This is made easier than it was in
1.0.x, where to customize a site, you needed to change the module code;
this should no longer be necessary.)

=item *

All of the installation steps below should be executed as root.


=back


=head2 Installation Procedure

There are six steps to installation.  Skip the parts you already
have installed (making sure you have the correct versions).  Make sure
to read the special note about Apache / mod_perl installation.

=over 4

=item 1.

B<Install MySQL.>

Please refer to MySQL documentation for compilation
and/or installation notes for any questions with this process.  Find
the script that runs mysql (probably F<safe_mysqld>) and add these
lines to the beginning of it:

	TZ=GMT
	export TZ

Start MySQL (it must be running for the installation of Perl modules
and Slash).

Create a database to be used by Slash.

Create a username/password that can access that database (by
default, we normally set the user to have all permissions, but that
might not be appropriate for your site; make sure that you have
at least privileges to select, insert, update, delete, create,
drop, and index).


=item 2.

B<Install perl.>

perl is likely already installed on your machine; make sure its
version is at least the minimum required (see L<"REQUIREMENTS">).


=item 3.

B<Install Apache and mod_perl.>

B<You MUST install mod_perl and Apache as directed here>.  OK, that is
not strictly true, but it is I<mostly> true.  If you already have mod_perl
installed, it is probably not configured properly to work with Slash
and you will have to rebuild it.  [If you are using the provided httpd.conf
file from the slash distribution, and find that Apache is giving you errors,
chances are mod_perl is not installed correctly, and you need to build it
from scratch.]  Of course, if you have your own Apache modules or build
options, you will need to modify the instructions here appropriately.

First, untar apache and mod_perl.  Then, go to the mod_perl directory,
and have mod_perl build and install apache for you:

	perl Makefile.PL APACHE_SRC=/where_you_have_the_source DO_HTTPD=1 \
		USE_APACI=1 PERL_MARK_WHERE=1 EVERYTHING=1 \
		APACHE_PREFIX=/where_apache_will_be_installed
	make
	make test
	make install

B<NOTE>: You may be unsuccessful with C<make test> if the perl modules
are not yet installed.  However, some Perl modules will not install
without Apache and mod_perl installed.  If you wish, come back and
run C<make test> after installing here, and then installing the Perl
modules, to make sure everything is OK.

=item 4.

B<Install the Perl modules.>

The best way to do this is with the CPAN module.

You might also wish to install each module by hand, using distributions
found on the CPAN.  See L<perlmodinstall>
for more information on installing perl modules.

B<IMPORTANT NOTES>:

=over 4

=item B<Overactive CPAN>

With some versions of the CPAN module, the module will try to
download and install the latest version of Perl.  Watch what
the module is doing; if it begins to download an entire perl
distribution, interrupt it (hit ctrl-C) until it stops, then try
again with the CPAN module.  This should not be an issue in the latest
version of Bundle::Slash.

=item B<Uninstalling Old Modules>

Sometimes, you will be installing a newer version of a module that
exists elsewhere on the system.  You might want to tell the CPAN module
to automatically remove older files.  To do that from the CPAN shell,
type:

	cpan> o conf make_install_arg UNINST=1

=item B<Old Version>

If you have previously installed Bundle::Slash, you will want
to install it again, but you will need to delete the existing
version.  Go to your F<.cpan/Bundle> directory (usually
F<~/.cpan/Bundle/>) and remove F<Slash.pm>.

=item B<Additional Libraries>

You must have certain libraries existing on your system before
building, for Compress::Zlib and XML::Parser (see L<"REQUIREMENTS">).

=item B<BSD>

If running BSD, also install the BSD::Resource module.

=item B<Alternate DBs>

If not using MySQL, just allow the installation of its drivers
to continue, and possibly fail.  Then install the driver you need
(e.g., for PostgreSQL, use "DBD::Pg") using the CPAN shell.

=item B<DBIx::Password>

When installing DBIx::Password, you will be asked for various
information, the same information used to create the database
and database user in Step 1.  You will also be asked for a
B<virtual user> name, which will be the identifier for all of
this data.  You can just use the name of your site,
or any other alphanumeric string.  You will use this virtual
user name in other places, so do not forget it.

=item B<libnet Broken>

libnet is currently broken somewhat in its tests.  Please use
C<install Net::Cmd> first, before you install anything else.
If it fails only tests 8 and 9 of t/require, then it is OK;
just do C<force install Net::Cmd>, then continue on with the
rest of the modules installation.

=back

To use the CPAN module, invoke the CPAN shell:

	perl -MCPAN -e shell

After it has been configured, install Bundle::Slash:

	cpan> install Bundle::Slash

To read the README for any module, before or after installing:

	cpan> readme MODULE

If you have problems, feel free to re-run C<install Bundle::Slash>.  It
will safely skip anything already installed.

To read the documentation of any of the modules, once they have been
installed, type C<perldoc MODULE> at the command line.


=item 5.

B<Install Slash.>

Unpack the distribution and go to the new directory that
creates, and type:

	make
	make install

B<Note>: you will want the GNU versions of fileutils (version
4.0 recommended, for cp and install) and make.  Older versions of
install, and make and cp from other systems, might not work.

There are a few options to C<make> and C<make install> you may
want to change.

	option		default			purpose
	==========================================================
	SLASH_PREFIX	/usr/local/slash	Location for
						installed files
	INIT		/etc or /etc/rc.d	Location for init
						scripts
	USER		nobody			User to own files
	GROUP		nobody			Group to own files
	CP		cp			Name of or path to
						alternate `cp`
	INSTALL		install			Name of or path to
						alternate `install`

(USER and GROUP will also be changed later on a per-site basis,
in step 6. while running F<install-slashsite>.)

So, for example, you might type (although the default SLASH_PREFIX
is I<strongly> recommended):

	make SLASH_PREFIX=/home/slash
	make install SLASH_PREFIX=/home/slash

When done, a configuration file for Apache will be created at
F<$SLASH_PREFIX/slash.conf>.  You can put its contents into your
httpd.conf, or you can just C<Include> it in your httpd.conf.

B<WARNING!>

Please be aware that if you include F<$SLASH_PREFIX/slash.conf>
or F<$SLASH_PREFIX/sites/sitename/sitename.conf> more than once,
or if this file shares contents with directives in httpd.conf,
that your Slash site WILL break. The directives in
F<$SLASH_PREFIX/slash.conf> should be run only ONCE in any any
site context.  Read through F<$SLASH_PREFIX/slash.conf> to make
sure it all looks proper.

=item 6.

B<Install your Slash site.>

Go to your installation directory (by default, F</usr/local/slash>)
and execute (where C<VIRTUAL_USER> is the name of the virtual
user given in the DBIx::Password distribution):

	bin/install-slashsite -u VIRTUAL_USER

The program will prompt for answers to several configuration questions.
Answer the questions.  When done, another configuration
file will be created at F<$SLASH_PREFIX/$SITENAME/$SITENAME.conf>.
You can put its contents unto your httpd.conf, or you can just C<Include>
it in your httpd.conf.

B<NOTE>: Read the message printed at the end of running install_slashsite.

=item 7.

B<Start it up.>

After installation of the site is done, and Apache has been stopped
and started (do NOT try to restart Apache, but do a full stop and
start), run slashd.  This should be done via the init script:

	/etc/init.d/slash start

slashd is the daemon that runs routine maintenance on Slash sites,
including sending out daily mailings, cleaning up the database,
and updating stories.  The init script above will start up an
individual slashd daemon process process for each installed site.

=back


=head1 INSTALLATION OPTIONS

=head2 Multiple Servers

You can, of course, have a separate database server from your Slash
server.  Further, you can have multiple web servers for one Slash site.
Slashdot, for instance, has one primary server with all of the code
(Apache, perl, etc.), and it runs slashd and NFS.  Each
web server then mounts the code read-only over NFS.  Some notes:

=over 4

=item *

Make sure the MySQL server allows the user to log in from each web
server, and the NFS server.

=item *

Make sure, if you use the same httpd tree on all machines, that
the httpd.conf is listening to the proper IP addresses.  This can be
done by putting all of the IP addresses in the conf file, or by having
a separate Listen file on each machine.  Similarly, make sure that
each web server's logfiles unique to each machine, not written to the
NFS volumes.

=back


=head2 Virtual Hosts

Slash has support for virtual hosts, so you can have multiple
Slash sites on one machine.  Simply execute step 6 in the install
process for each Slash site (after adding a new virtual user to
DBIx::Password for each).


=head2 SSL

In Slash, there are two variables for the root URL of the site.
B<absolutedir> is the full URL, including protocol, while B<rootdir>
is the URL without protocol:

	absolutedir	http://slashcode.com
	rootdir		//slashcode.com

B<absolutedir> is used only for creating external links to the site
(such as in RSS files).  B<rootdir> is used for internal links; that
way, you can use the same HTML pages for SSL and non-SSL.  You don't
have to do anything special to the code or preferences to allow it to
work with SSL by itself, SSL and non-SSL together, or non-SSL by itself.


=head2 Non-Root

It is possible to install and run everything here without root.

Describing the process for a non-root install would take up significant
space and time, having to account for differences in various systems,
and all the workarounds necessary for it to work.

If you must have a non-root install, consult the various documentation
for Apache, MySQL, and perl about running and installing without root
access.  Then, for Slash, you simply need to set the make variables PREFIX,
SLASH_PREFIX, and INIT appropriately for your needs.

B<Note>: Slash (or, more accurately, Apache + mod_perl and MySQL) take
up a lot of system resources.  It is I<not advisable> for anyone to
run Slash at all on a system, without the permission of the administrator
of that system.


=head1 UPGRADING

B<These upgrade procedures are still in testing.  Please read them
entirely before beginning.  We are not responsible for any loss of
data or functionality.>

=head2 Slash 2.0 -> Slash 2.2

Slash 2.2 is a major upgrade from Slash 2.0.  It takes a little bit
of work to get it going.

=over 4

=item 1.

BACK EVERYTHING UP ON THE EXISTING SITE.

=item 2.

Install Bundle::Slash.  If you have done so previously, follow
the instructions for removing the existing version of
Bundle::Slash before proceeding.

=item 3.

Apply this patch to your installed Slash::Install module (probably
easiest to hand-edit the file):

  --- Install.pm~ Wed May  9 15:02:34 2001
  +++ Install.pm  Fri Sep 28 12:44:41 2001
  @@ -116,7 +116,7 @@
   sub writeTemplateFile {
          my($self, $filename, $template) = @_;
          open(FILE, '>' . $filename) or die "$! unable to open file $filename to write to";
  -       for (keys %$template) {
  +       for (qw(section description title page lang name template seclev)) {
                  next if ($_ eq 'tpid');
                  print FILE "__${_}__\n";
                  $template->{$_} =~ s/\015\012/\n/g;

=item 4.

Run C<template-check> on your site, and make a note of every change
you've made to the standard templates.  You will need to make those
changes again, manually, later.

This is unfortunately unavoidable, because templates include code
that changes significantly between releases.  It is recommended
that you compile your changes into a THEME so they may easily be
updated and applied.

=item 5.

Stop Apache and slashd on the target machine(s).

=item 6

Install Slash.

B<If installing on a different machine ...>

=over 4

=item 1

Install slash 2.2 as normal.  Do not yet run install-slashsite.

=item 2

Make sure that from this machine, you can access not only the database
used for this installation, but the one used for the old installation.
You may wish to, instead of accessing that database directly if it
on another machine, dumping it and adding it to your new database server
under a different name.

=item 3

Add a virtual user to DBIx::Password for the old installation.

=back


B<If installing on the same machine ...>

=over 4

=item 1

Create a new database for the new installation.  You cannot
use the same database for both installations.

=item 2

Add a new virtual user to DBIx::Password for the new database,
and update (and flush) MySQL privileges appropriately.  You cannot
use the same virtual user for both installations.

=item 3

It is highly recommended that you move F</usr/local/slash>
(or whatever your installation directory is) to a new location,
such as F</usr/local/slash-old>, and install a clean slash 2.2
installation.  However, this is not necessary to do; you may install
slash 2.2 on top of the slash 2.0 installation.

The reason to not move anything is that you can keep any customizations
done (images, additional scripts and plugins, static files, etc.).
The reason to move it is so that everything is clean.  It is highly
recommended that you move it, and then manually copy back the pieces
you want.

=item 4

In any event, either move the old directory, or don't, and
then install slash 2.2 as normal.  Do not yet run install-slashsite.

=back


=item 7.

If you have plugins or themes from the old installation to install,
copy them over now.  Warning: some plugins and themes might need to be
ported first.  You may wish to deal with them later if they are not
yet ported to slash 2.2.

=item 8.

Run install-slashsite.  Use the new virtual user.

=item 9.

Copy over any files (images, FAQs, etc.) that need to be copied, if necessary.

=item 10.

Run update script, F<utils/slash2toslash2.2>.  B<Read its instructions!>

=item 11.

Update templates.

=item 12.

Doublecheck Apache configs (httpd/slash.conf, site/sitename/sitename.conf).
These configs have changed from the last version.  Read the comments and set
them up as desired.

=item 13.

Start Apache.

=item 14.

Start slashd.

=back


=head2 Slash 2.2.x -> Slash 2.2.y

Read all of this section before doing any of it.

The first thing to do is to, as per the instructions below under
INSTALLATION, unpack the latest distribution and run make and make
install with the proper arguments.

=over 4

=item Overwriting Changes

This process will overwrite any customizations of your installed
modules, or customizations of the installed scripts in
/usr/local/slash/themes/ and /usr/local/slash/plugins/ (for themes
and plugins that come with Slash).  If you ran install-slashsite
with the default option of using symlinks, and made customizations
to the originals instead of breaking the symlink and copying the file
over, then this will overwrite your changes.

If you did modify the original instead of a copy, then break the
symlink, copy over the original (as modified), and then continue.
The original will be copied over by the new version, and your modified
copy will remain intact.

=item Templates

With every update, there are changes to templates.  But most people
will modify their templates.  A relatively simple way to see what
has changed is to use template-tool and template-check.  This
procedure should help most users deal with the integration of new
templates into an existing site (it will only work with the slashcode
theme, but a simple modification to the code of template-check
can fix that).

=over 4

=item Dump

Use template-tool to dump your templates into an empty directory.

	% mkdir templates
	% cd templates
	% template-tool -u VIRTUAL_USER -d

(Defaults to current directory.)

=item Compare

Use template-check to compare installed templates in
/usr/local/slash/themes/slashcode/ and /usr/local/slash/plugins/ against
the templates that have been dumped.

	% template-check -u VIRTUAL_USER

(Defaults to current directory.)

This will use diff to show you the differences.  You can either go
into the templates with a text editor (in another window) and change
the dumped ones by hand, edit them by hand in the Template Editor
via the web browser, or take a note of every template you want to
copy over your existing template.

After each directory of templates is done, hit "q" to continue to
the next plugin/theme.

=item Sync

If you made changes by hand via the web, you are done.  Otherwise, take
the list of templates to update, and pass the full filenames to
template-tool (this will either be the templates you modified by hand
in the dump directory, or the unmodified ones in the installation
directories). You might need to put each filename in quotes because of
the ";" character in the filenames.  This will overwrite your existing
template with the new template.

	% template-tool -u VIRTUAL_USER -s LIST

=back

=back

=head2 Slash 1.0 -E<gt> Slash 2.2

Please read the complete documentation of F<utils/slash1toslash2.2>.
It is a program that will convert your database from Slash 1.0
to a new Slash 2.2 database.  The program documentation (which can
be read with F<perldoc>) details exactly what process it follows
to do the conversion, so you can attempt to do it by hand if you
prefer.



=head1 REQUIREMENTS

=head2 Software

Below, the main software components needed are listed.  The
recommended version is noted, along with the earliest version
that has been tested (or is expected) to work.  The earliest
versions are not necessarily supported, but should work.
perl 5.005_03 is supported, but MySQL 3.22 is not.


=over 4

=item perl

Version 5.6.1 (5.005_03). [NOTE: perl 5.6.0 may have some problems.
5.6.1 is recommended.]

	http://www.cpan.org/

=item MySQL

Version 3.23.42 (3.23).

	http://www.mysql.com/

=item Apache

Version 1.3.20 (1.3.6).

	http://httpd.apache.org/

=item mod_perl

Versions 1.26 (1.21).

	http://perl.apache.org/

=item Sendmail or other transport daemon

Refer to your OS distribution.


=item Perl module distributions

See http://search.cpan.org/ and http://www.cpan.org/
to get each module individually; however, we recommend
you download them using the CPAN module.

The latest version of each module is recommended.

For Compress::Zlib, the zlib development library is required.
For XML::Parser, the expat library is required.
If they are not present on the system already, download and
install them before installing the modules.

	http://www.gzip.org/zlib/
	http://sf.net/projects/expat/

The following required distributions are all included in
the Bundle::Slash distribution.

=over 4

=item libnet

=item Digest-MD5

=item MD5

=item Compress-Zlib

=item Archive-Tar

=item File-Spec

=item Storable

=item MIME-Base64

=item libwww-perl

=item HTML-Tree

=item Font-AFM

=item HTML-FormatText

=item XML-Parser

=item XML-RSS

=item DBI

=item Data-ShowTable

=item Msql-Mysql-modules

=item DBIx-Password

=item ApacheDBI

=item libapreq

=item AppConfig

=item Template-Toolkit (version 2)

=item Mail-Sendmail

=item MailTools

=item Email-Valid

=item Getopt-Long

=item Image-Size

=item Time-HiRes

=item TimeDate

=item DateManip

=item Time-modules

=item Schedule-Cron

=back

=back


=head2 Hardware

There are no specific hardware requirements.  Apache (with mod_perl) and
MySQL both take up a lot of RAM; running a complete system with 128MB
might be possible, if you do some tuning of the configuration, but a
practical minimum 256MB is recommended, though less could be sufficient
with some tuning.Storage space depends on how busy you expect the site
to be; 250MB is possible, but a minimum 1GB is recommended.  Necessary
processor speed is also dependent on how busy the site is; Pentium 133
or equivalent might work, but less than a Pentium II/200 is not
recommended.

For the curious, Slashdot (as of September 2001) runs on nine machines:
nine webservers (each is Pentium III/600, 1GB RAM, 9GB hard drive), one
NFS server (600MHz PIII, 1GB RAM), and three database servers
database server (quad 600MHz PIII, 4GB RAM).  One database server is
live, one is a replicated backup, and a third is for doing live searches
and performance-intensive SELECTs by daemons etc.

However, this is certainly overkill for most sites (and possibly even
overkill for Slashdot).  slashcode.com runs on two web servers and one
NFS/database server.  Many sites can run fine on just one machine for
everything (we use a minimum of two web server machines on every site
for load balancing and redundancy).


=head1 VERSIONS

Each version of slash has a code name, and the files on CVS for that
version are tagged with that name.  The current release is always
MAIN.  The versioning scheme is as Linux and Perl are,
revision.version.subversion.  version is even for releases, and odd
for development.  The codename applies to the development version
and subsequent release.

For example, 1.0.11 is a normal release, while 1.1.0 is the first
development release for what will be the next release (either 1.2
or 2.0).

The CVS repository is tagged with version numbers, so to get release
1.0.3, use tag "v1_0_3_0".  The last number (in this case a zero) will
be incremented during development ("v1_0_3_1", "v1_0_3_2", etc.) until
the next release.

=head2 Codenames

=over 4

=item v1.0

beast

=item v2.0

bender

=item v2.2

fry

=back


=head1 VERSION

$Id: INSTALL.pod,v 1.20.2.23 2002/02/07 13:18:00 pudge Exp $
