Forum OpenACS Q&A: new to OACS

1: new to OACS

Posted by edwin ho on 06/13/02 02:47 AM

hi,

I want to download and install OACS but I don't know which one to get?
what are the differences between the packages? and I want to use
Apache so that I can run multipld domains in 1 server.

I *think* i need:

1 apache
1(or many) OACS package
1 mod_aolserver module

then I should be able to run multiple sites on the same server using
Apache's builtin 'virtual domain' feature. Would that allow me to run
multiple OACS sites and all using the same DB? would the data be
seperated or is all the data going to be in the same tables and stuff?

Would that work or I am going at it totally the wrong way?

Thanks,
edwin

2: virtual domains, which OACS package, howto (response to 1)

Posted by edwin ho on 06/13/02 03:17 AM

hi,

I want to download and install OACS but I don't know which one to get? what are the differences between the packages? and I want to use Apache so that I can run multipld domains in 1 server.

I *think* i need:

1 apache
1(or many) OACS package
1 mod_aolserver module

then I should be able to run multiple sites on the same server using Apache's builtin 'virtual domain' feature. Would that allow me to run multiple OACS sites and all using the same DB? would the data be seperated or is all the data going to be in the same tables and stuff?

Would that work or I am going at it totally the wrong way?

Thanks, edwin

3: Response to new to OACS (response to 1)

Posted by Tilmann Singer on 06/13/02 01:02 PM

I'd suggest you download OpenACS-4, from here: http://openacs.org/software.adp - this is the soon-to-be-released, all new shiny version of OpenACS that everybody is talking about.

Follow the installation guide from here: http://openacs.org/doc/openacs-4/

Information on virtual hosting can be found here: http://www.theashergroup.com/tag/articles/nsvhr/virtual-hosting-howto

If you just want to serve different domains from one instance of OpenACS, e.g. same DB, same users etc. then also check out the host-node-map stuff that is included in OpenACS-4 in the subsite package.

4: Response to new to OACS (response to 1)

Posted by edwin ho on 06/13/02 06:18 PM

Thanks Tilmann,

Is there anything wrong with using Apache vs. NSVHR? The reason I am asking is because when I was doing a search for 'virtual domains' here, seems like people are using a seperate Apache process just to handle the proxying and then running AOLserver to handle the site.

If I do use AOLserver to do it all, I should run the VAT module instead of the NSVHR right? since that offers better logging and the ability to run it all off one AOLserver process.

I've checked the release notes of OACS4 and it seems that a lot of the modules are still alpha. Does that mean that, they are alpha because there hasn't been thorough testing for stability or alpha because they haven't been fully ported to PG and won't work properly?

reason I'm asking is because I'm not a programer and if anything bad happens, the only way I know how to fix it is to rebuild the whole system...

thanks edwin