LON-CAPA Installation

Current Installation Procedure

Scott Harrison

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 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://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.