LON-CAPA Installation

Current Installation Procedure

This is the current list of steps to support LON-CAPA installation. These steps have been tested (almost, I'm going to do this today).

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 http://www.lon-capa.org as your download URL, and /install/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://www.lon-capa.org/install/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://www.lon-capa.org/install/3.1/scripts/remove_extra.sh as root.
5. 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://www.lon-capa.org/install/3.1/loncapafiles.html.
   • 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)
   • Run AS USER=www (NEVER EVER EVER EVER AS USER=root) /home/httpd/perl/loncron &.
   • 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.