[LON-CAPA-admin] installation problems

[Martin Siegert]

Hi Matthew,

thanks for your response.

On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 08:57:40AM -0400, Matthew Brian Hall wrote:

> > question: is it correct that only gnuplot-3.7.1-5.i386.rpm,
> > libgd-1.3-4.i386.rpm, and LON-CAPA-systemperl-3.5-rh7.i386.rpm are
> > specific to loncapa, whereas all the other packages are either identical
> > or can be replaced with the corresponding newer RH7.3 versions?
> 
> I believe you'll also need to pick up the legacy readline:
> 
> rpm -i --oldpackage readline-2.2.1-6.i386.rpm
> 
> as gnuplot requires it.

Actually, I believe this is incorrect. RH7.3 comes with readline
(current version 4.2a-4) and readline2.2.1 (currently 2.2.1-4).
readline2.2.1 contains exactly the same libraries (/usr/lib/libhistory.so.3.0
and /usr/lib/libreadline.so.3.0) that are in readline-2.2.1-6.i386.rpm.
Thus, as far as I can tell readline-2.2.1-6.i386.rpm is not needed as
long as readline2.2.1 is installed. This has the advantage of using
a RedHat supported package which, e.g., check-rpms recognizes correctly.

> Since I'm not totally familiar with your current
> setup there may be things I'm missing.
> 
> I suggest, once you can log in to LON-CAPA, that you do a search.  If you get
> a broken page it's likely because the perl-DBI or perl-DBD-MySQL packages
> are missing.  I've had problems with these not being installed on somei
> machines that definately should have had it...

Yes, I have those (rpm -qa | grep perl | wc -l shows 26 packages!).

> > It seems to me that the httpd.conf file that comes with the
> > loncapa-rh73install.tar is too old.
> 
> You are absolutely correct.
> 
> > Can I just copy the httpd.conf file from
> > the library server to the access server and then run UPDATE?
> 
> This should work just fine.

I did that and it seems to work, i.e., UPDATE now runs through fine.

> Let me know if you need anything else!

Not right now, but I may come back to that: for now I have only installed
the loncapa software on the new access servers. I have not done anything
that would allow the access servers to serve the contents that is
stored on our library server ... and I currently have no idea what I would
have to do in order to achieve that.

A different issue: after looking once more at the LON-CAPA-systemperl
package I think it needs a cleanup at least when it comes to version 1.0.
The libgd stuff has nothing to do with perl and probably should go into
a LON-CAPA-libgd package. Furthermore, there are quite a few files in
LON-CAPA-systemperl that are already in standard RH7.3 packages, e.g.,
perl-HTML-Parser. Maybe all of that should be tackled when switching
LON-CAPA support to RH9.

Cheers,
Martin

-- 
Martin Siegert
Manager, Research Services
WestGrid Site Manager
Academic Computing Services                        phone: (604) 291-4691
Simon Fraser University                            fax:   (604) 291-4242
Burnaby, British Columbia                          email: siegert at sfu.ca
Canada  V5A 1S6