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INSTALL
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INSTALL
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NAME
INSTALL - Slash Installation
SYNOPSIS
This document describes how to install Slash, versions 2.2 and
pre-releases of 2.3. 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 (or 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 was supported (alpha-quality) in earlier versions of Slash 2,
but has not been updated at all since late 2001. At this point, Slash
works only with MySQL.
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.
Which version should I use?
If you are using Slash 2.2.5 or before, including all 2.1.x, 2.0.x, and
1.x versions, you should upgrade to the latest version in the 2.2 tree,
2.2.6, as soon as possible. There are security issues with previous
versions. You should not install previous versions.
As of this writing (June 2003), our last official release (2.2.6) was
some time ago and many features have been added since. We have not yet
released 2.3.0. If you want to use more recent code, check out CVS
versions from cvs.slashcode.com. If you are installing a new Slash site,
you probably do not want to use the very latest CVS, but you probably do
want to use the latest "R_" tag available in CVS. See "VERSIONS", "CVS
tags", below, for advice on choosing and maintaining a CVS installation.
Important Note
We know you want to get right into the installation, but you probably
want to read this whole document first. Notably, the software and
hardware requirements are given later on in the "REQUIREMENTS" section,
which you probably want to go read now, to check for potential problems.
Also, you will find information on upgrading a Slash site (which can be
tricky); uninstalling; and troubleshooting for common problems.
INSTALLATION
Installation Notes
* For slashd (see utils/slash, which starts slashd), mod_perl (see
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. Your server(s) do not actually need to
have their operating systems set to GMT (ours aren't), but if you
want to do that, it won't hurt anything.
* 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 not
recommended for performance reasons. Slash is designed to have one
shared core of code for all Slash sites on a system.)
* All of the installation steps below should be executed as root.
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.
1. Install MySQL.
If it is already installed, doublecheck that its version is at least
the minimum required (see "REQUIREMENTS"). If you have questions
about the installation process, please refer to MySQL documentation.
Slash requires that your MySQL server run in the GMT timezome. Find
your global my.cnf file (probably "/etc/my.cnf" or
"/etc/mysql/my.cnf"), locate the "[mysqld_safe]" (or
"[safe_mysqld]") group, and add this line to it:
timezone = GMT
Start, or restart, 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,
index and alter).
2. Install perl.
perl is likely already installed on your machine; doublecheck that
its version is at least the minimum required (see "REQUIREMENTS").
3. Install Apache and mod_perl.
You MUST install mod_perl and Apache as directed here. OK, that is
not strictly true, but unless you really know what you're doing,
just assume it's 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. Not following this direction is one of the most common
reasons we see for a Slash install not working.
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
NOTE: You may be unsuccessful with "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 "make test" after installing here, and then installing the Perl
modules, to make sure everything is OK.
NOTE: If you know what you're doing, Slash will work with a DSO
Apache. Be sure you're on the latest versions of Apache and mod_perl
and remember PERL_MARK_WHERE=1 and EVERYTHING=1.
4. Install the Perl modules.
Slash is powerful and complex, and, rather than reinvent the wheel,
it often relies on CPAN modules. Open-source code reuse has many
advantages. One disadvantage is that installing all those modules
can be tricky, as you may be about to find out.
You could install each module in Bundle/Slash.pm by hand, but this
would be time-consuming. Instead, you'll want to install the bundle
"Bundle::Slash" using CPAN.
IMPORTANT NOTES (read through these first):
Overall comment about CPAN module failure
It is possible that upon typing "install Bundle::Slash", you
will have one or more modules fail to install on the first
try. The rest of the modules will be successfully installed
but some won't. In that case you will want to fix the
problems and retype "install Bundle::Slash" to make sure
everything proceeds smoothly. Once that command gives you
just a long list of "Foo::Bar is up to date," you are done.
Until that point, you are not done; you must resolve the
errors.
Old Version of Bundle::Slash
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 .cpan/Bundle directory (usually
~/.cpan/Bundle/) and remove Slash.pm.
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.
Uninstalling Old Modules
Sometimes, you will be installing a newer version of a
module that exists elsewhere on the system. You probably
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
And if you want that to be CPAN's default from now on, add:
cpan> o conf commit
Automatically Installing Dependencies
Some of the modules in Bundle::Slash require other modules.
We have not put some of those other modules in Bundle::Slash
because, if those requirements change in the future, we
don't want to make future Slash sites install more than they
have to.
If you see this:
---- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [FOO/Bar-1.23.tar.gz] -----
Foobar::Baz
Shall I follow them and prepend them to the queue
of modules we are processing right now? [yes]
That's normal; just hit return.
If it annoys you to have to do this, edit the
"prerequisites_policy" field of your CPAN/Config.pm file.
Or, just do this to change it to automatically follow
dependencies and commit the change:
cpan> o conf prerequisites_policy follow
cpan> o conf commit
Additional Libraries
You must have certain libraries existing on your system
before building, for Compress::Zlib and XML::Parser (see
"REQUIREMENTS").
BSD Systems
If running BSD, also install the BSD::Resource module. We
have heard reports of problems running Slash on BSD, but you
are welcome to try; patches would be lovely.
Alternate DBs
Slash currently requires MySQL. While our design allows for
supporting multiple DBs, actually supporting anything other
than MySQL has fallen by the wayside since the release of
Slash version 2.0. We have heard almost zero demand for any
other database, and this isn't a feature we need ourselves,
so it's not a high priority. Patches and feedback are, of
course, always welcome.
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 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. If you don't
understand what you're doing here, don't fake it; this is a
common reason we see for Slash installations failing.
Documentation
To read the README for any module, before or after
installing:
cpan> readme MODULE
To read the documentation of any of the modules, once they
have been installed, type "perldoc MODULE" at the command
line.
See perlmodinstall for more information on installing perl
modules.
Now that you have read the above notes, you're ready to install the
perl modules.
To use the CPAN module, invoke the CPAN shell:
perl -MCPAN -e shell
(Or, you may have the unix command "cpan" already available, which
does the same thing.)
If this is the first time you've invoked CPAN, you will be asked to
configure it.
Next, install some important networking modules. Doing this first is
optional but, if there are problems with these modules, you'll want
to resolve them before moving on to the rest of the installation:
cpan> install Bundle::LWP
Make sure all those modules are installed and up to date before
proceeding. Note that Net::Cmd has a history of being a little
broken in its tests; if it fails on tests 8 and 9 of t/require, then
it's OK; just do "force install Net::Cmd" and repeat "install
Bundle::LWP".
After the LWP has been installed and configured successfully, "exit"
the CPAN, reinvoke it with the "perl -MCPAN -e shell" command, and
install Bundle::Slash:
cpan> install Bundle::Slash
This will be a long process. Several modules will ask to be
configured during this process. Here are some tips:
DBI Don't worry about the threading warning.
DBIx::Password
See IMPORTANT NOTES above.
Apache::Test and Apache::Cookie
You will need "httpd" and "apxs" in your $PATH, and even if they
are there, you will probably see the lengthy error that starts
"Apache cannot spawn child processes as 'root'". This is
because, ironically, Apache::Test's self-tests are a colossal
pain to actually run. Personally I just "force install
Apache::Cookie" which is lame but solves the problem.
Template
The Template Toolkit is a complex install. Try accepting all the
defaults and see if it works. It has 90 test scripts with over
2000 tests, and installation will be halted if just 1 of these
tests fails. Do a "look Template" and try your best to resolve
the issues. The README includes a URL to the mailing list
archives, where you may find help. If you're getting 100 errors,
you need to fix them, but if you're down to 1 or 2 you can't
fix, we suggest you make a note of what the failures were and
just "force install Template".
If you have problems, feel free to re-run "install Bundle::Slash".
It will safely skip anything already installed.
If you are feeling lucky and are in a big hurry, you might try
"force install Bundle::Slash", which will skip all tests for all
modules -- but if you do this and later things start to fail, you're
on your own, don't complain.
Again: once you are able to do "install Bundle::Slash" and see
nothing but a long list of modules that are "up to date," you are
done. Until you see that, you are not done with this step!
If you wish to take full advantage of Slash, there are some plugins
not installed and vars not turned on by default, which provide
additional features, improve performance, or help in testing, which
require additional perl modules and sometimes non-perl libraries.
See the listing at the bottom of Bundle/Slash.pm, and see also the
tips in plugins/Admin/README, plugins/HumanConf/INSTALL-NOTES, and
plugins/Stats/README.
5. Install Slash.
Unpack the distribution and go to the new directory that creates,
and type:
make
make install
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 "make" and "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 install-slashsite.)
So, for example, you might type (although the default SLASH_PREFIX
is *strongly* recommended):
make SLASH_PREFIX=/home/slash
make install SLASH_PREFIX=/home/slash
When done, a configuration file for Apache will be created at
$SLASH_PREFIX/httpd/slash.conf. You can put its contents into your
httpd.conf, or you can just "Include" it in your httpd.conf. You
must do one or the other!
WARNING!
Please be aware that if you include $SLASH_PREFIX/slash.conf or
$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 $SLASH_PREFIX/slash.conf
should be run only ONCE in any any site context. Read through
$SLASH_PREFIX/slash.conf to make sure it all looks proper.
6. Install your Slash site.
Go to your installation directory (by default, /usr/local/slash) and
execute (where "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 $SLASH_PREFIX/$SITENAME/$SITENAME.conf. You
can put its contents unto your httpd.conf, or you can just "Include"
it in your httpd.conf.
NOTE: Read the message printed at the end of running
install_slashsite. Failure to pay attention here is another common
reason we see for Slash installations not working.
7. Start it up.
After installation of the site is done, and Apache has been stopped
and started (do not try to "restart" Apache, but rather do a full
stop and start), then 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.
INSTALLATION OPTIONS
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:
* Make sure the MySQL server allows the user to log in from each web
server, and the NFS server.
* 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.
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).
SSL
In Slash, there are two variables for the root URL of the site.
absolutedir is the full URL, including protocol, while rootdir is the
URL without protocol:
absolutedir http://slashcode.com
rootdir //slashcode.com
absolutedir is used only for creating external links to the site (such
as in RSS files). 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.
Non-Root
It is possible to install and run everything here without root.
It is not easy. If you don't know your flavor of unix intimately, we
don't recommend trying this.
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. We don't support it,
and we're not going to document it.
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 need to set the make variables PREFIX,
SLASH_PREFIX, and INIT appropriately for your needs.
Note: Slash sites (or, more accurately, Apache + mod_perl and MySQL)
take up a lot of system resources. It is *not advisable* for anyone to
run Slash on any system, without the permission of the administrator of
that system.
Separate Image Server
Those of you with infinite RAM will have no problems hosting as many
Slash sites as you want on a single box running just Apache. Those whose
RAM is limited may be able to keep your MaxClients down to a reasonable
level to avoid going into swap, and still not lock clients out of your
website, by using a separate webserver process to deliver your images.
This is possible with any website, of course, not just a Slash site, but
because Slash's httpd clients all have mod_perl, a lot of perl modules,
and a lot of templates all compiled into RAM, they are especially heavy.
While serving an image may take only a few milliseconds, which would you
rather have tied up on your computer for those milliseconds, 25 MB of
RAM or 5 MB?
Slashdot, and some other Slash sites we're hosting, are currently using
boa 0.94.14rc17 (http://www.boa.org/) for images. Boa is fast and has a
small footprint. It's easy to build ("./configure && make") but you have
to install it yourself by copying the binary and mkdir'ing a little tree
wherever you want it. We did roughly this. Your mileage may vary. This
sets up an alternate server just for images on port 8080, and sets
Slash's imagedir var to point to it. Your apache will still serve images
at the old URLs if anyone requests them, but nobody will, because your
site's pages will all point to boa:
# Install boa and set up its files.
cd /usr/local/src/boa-0.94.14rc17
./configure && make
mkdir /usr/local/boa
mkdir /usr/local/boa/bin
mkdir /usr/local/boa/htdocs
cp -a src/{boa,boa_indexer,webindex.pl} /usr/local/boa/bin/
ln -s /usr/local/slash/site/mysite/htdocs/images /usr/local/boa/htdocs/images.mysite.com
touch /usr/local/boa/htdocs/favicon.ico
# Set up and edit boa conf file.
cp examples/boa.conf /usr/local/boa/
# At this point we patched /usr/local/boa/boa.conf, changing
# Port to 8080, ServerName to www.mysite.com, DocumentRoot to
# /usr/local/boa/htdocs, and commenting out the DirectoryIndex,
# DirectoryMaker, Alias and ScriptAlias directives.
# Start boa.
/usr/local/boa/bin/boa
# In mysql client:
# UPDATE vars SET value='//www.mysite.com:8080/images.mysite.com' WHERE name='imagedir';
# UPDATE stories SET writestatus='dirty';
# Restart apache, slashd; let slashd rewrite .shtml files both
# recent and archived.
You'll probably also want to create a script in your init.d and rcN.d
directories so boa runs at startup along with apache.
UPGRADING
These upgrade procedures are still in testing. Please read them entirely
before beginning. We are not responsible for any loss of data or
functionality.
Slash 1.0 -> Slash 2.2
You've got a site running Slash 1.0, from 2001? We're so sorry to hear
that.
Please read the complete documentation of utils/slash1toslash2.2. We
believe it will convert your database from Slash 1.0 to a new Slash 2.2
database, but it hasn't been tested in some time. The program
documentation (which can be read with perldoc) details exactly what
process it follows to do the conversion, so you can attempt to do it by
hand if you prefer.
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.
1. BACK EVERYTHING UP ON THE EXISTING SITE.
2. Install Bundle::Slash. If you have done so previously, follow the
instructions for removing the existing version of Bundle::Slash
before proceeding.
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;
4. Run "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.
5. Stop Apache and slashd on the target machine(s).
6 Install Slash.
If installing on a different machine ...
1 Install slash 2.2 as normal. Do not yet run install-slashsite.
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.
3 Add a virtual user to DBIx::Password for the old installation.
If installing on the same machine ...
1 Create a new database for the new installation. You cannot use
the same database for both installations.
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.
3 It is highly recommended that you move /usr/local/slash (or
whatever your installation directory is) to a new location, such
as /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.
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.
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.
8. Run install-slashsite. Use the new virtual user.
9. Copy over any files (images, FAQs, etc.) that need to be copied, if
necessary.
10. Run update script, utils/slash2toslash2.2. Read its instructions!
11. Update templates.
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.
13. Start Apache.
14. Start slashd.
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.
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.
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).
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.)
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.
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
Slash 2.2.6 -> Slash CVS
Use the sql/mysql/upgrades file; see "VERSIONS", "CVS tags", below. This
file is human-readable and very long. You can upgrade a 2.2.6 to the
latest CVS by methodically applying every step in this file, but it is
tedious and requires an engaged human brain reading the comments (i.e.,
don't "mysql slash < upgrades", that will fail miserably).
Slash CVS -> later Slash CVS
Again, use the sql/mysql/upgrades file (and the caveat just mentioned
still applies). Start from the CVS tag you left off at, and proceed to
the CVS tag you upgraded to (which should be the end of the file). If
you're not sure which tag you left off at, you might check the var
'cvs_tag_currentcode', which will contain the right value if you last
updated after September 2005.
In general, you should stop apache and slashd, do a "make install",
apply the upgrades file a line at a time for each Slash site, run
"template-tool -U -u virtusename" and "symlink-tool -U -u virtusername"
for each Slash site, and then start slashd and apache back up.
REQUIREMENTS
Software Requirements
Below, we list the main software components needed. The recommended
version is noted, along with the earliest version that has been tested
(or is expected) to work. The earliest versions are not recommended or
supported, but should work.
perl
Version 5.8.6 (5.6.1).
http://www.cpan.org/
MySQL
Version 4.1.18 (4.0.12).
http://www.mysql.com/
MySQL 3.23.x is no longer supported, as of CVS tag T_2_5_0_33
(October 18, 2004). Slashdot has been running on MySQL 4.1.x with no
problems, so we now recommend that, but 4.0.x works as well. We have
been testing 5.0.x for months but currently, no production sites run
it.
Apache
Version 1.3.33.
http://httpd.apache.org/
Since most of Apache 1.3.x's recent releases included security
fixes, we wouldn't recommend running an earlier version. As far as
we know, Slash is not compatible with Apache 2.x.
mod_perl
Version 1.29.
http://perl.apache.org/
memcached
Memcached is not required, but more and more, we are adding
optimizations to Slash which take load off your database. If you are
concerned about performance, this is one of the first options to
install.
http://www.danga.com/memcached/
Sendmail or other transport daemon
Refer to your OS distribution.
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. (See "INSTALLATION", item 4, "Install the Perl
modules.")
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/
On Debian Linux, try:
apt-get install zlib1g zlib1g-dev libexpat1 libexpat1-dev
The current list of required perl modules can be found in the
Bundle/Slash.pm file. At its end we also list optional modules,
which may be required depending on your setup.
Hardware Requirements
There are no specific hardware requirements.
Slash is designed to work well on multi-machine setups, with one or more
webheads that are separate from one or more MySQL DB machines. But for
low-load sites (1-5 pages/sec or slower), it can probably be run OK on a
single machine.
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 of 256MB is recommended, and
you will be much happier with at least 1GB of RAM. See "INSTALLATION
OPTIONS", "Separate Image Server" for tips on saving some RAM.
Disk space depends on how busy you expect the site to be. Slash keeps a
small database -- even Slashdot.org's DB compresses down to under 2 GB.
The disk files as installed are under 0.5 GB, and grow predictably as
stories and comments are added (keep an eye on the site/foo/logs/
directory, too). A minimum of 1 GB of disk is recommended.
Necessary processor speed is also dependent on how busy the site is. A
Pentium II/400 equivalent is recommended, but obviously, the faster the
better.
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 (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).
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.
Codenames
v1.0
beast
v2.0
bender
v2.2
fry
Security note
We are no longer releasing bugfixes, even for security, for the 1.0 or
2.0 versions, and do not recommend their use. If we become aware of
security issues in the 2.2 tree, we will release another version. For
this reason, if you are using any version of Slash in 2.2.x or earlier,
we recommend you upgrade to the latest version of 2.2, which as of this
writing (June 2003) is 2.2.6.
CVS tags
Our development of 2.3/2.4 has gone on exceptionally long without a
tarball release of 2.3.0. Most Slash hosting sites are choosing to
follow CVS instead of waiting, and we encourage this.
Installation of the latest CVS (as of June 2003) is almost identical to
the installation of 2.2.
You probably do not want to use the very latest CVS, as the Slash
developers are constantly updating it. If you wish to live on the edge,
try a T_2_3_0_x tag ("Testing in 2.3.0 branch" -- one or two of these
are added every week, Slashdot uses them, but they may have bugs). If
you are content with recent code that the developers believe is likely
to be free of major bugs, look for a recent R_2_3_0_x cvs tag ("Release
candidates for 2.3.0").
To upgrade from 2.2.x to the CVS tree, you will need to follow the
instructions in the sql/mysql/upgrades file. At the moment, these are
just SQL commands you will need to issue, but read carefully because you
may have to use judgement and issue command-line commands and so on. (We
are working on a tool to automate this process.) Once you are upgraded
to, or have installed, a given CVS tag, upgrading to later CVS tags is
simply a matter of following along in that file -- we append as we go,
and each T_* tag is clearly marked.
TROUBLESHOOTING COMMON INSTALLATION PROBLEMS
Here are some common reasons why Slash installations fail.
* Failure to build mod_perl with PERL_MARK_WHERE=1 EVERYTHING=1.
We emphasize this in the instructions for a reason. Go back and
reread the Installation Procedure, step 3.
* Perl module installation troubles.
If you have a unix-like system with CPAN properly installed and no
serious firewall issues, perl module installation will usually go
pretty smoothly. Some modules will have overactive testing code; for
example, if your system lacks "nslookup", some of the net-related
modules will complain and refuse to install themselves even though
it isn't strictly speaking necessary. If you suspect overactive
testing, "force install Foo::Bar" for the offending module and then
try "install Bundle::Slash" again.
We list perl 5.6.0 as supported, but 5.6.1 is recommended. If you're
having CPAN installation troubles, upgrading to the latest version
will make life easier. Note that you'll want to recompile
mod_perl/Apache after upgrading perl.
* Multiple Perls installed.
If you have more than one binary file named "perl", trouble awaits.
It's OK to have a "/usr/bin/perl5.00503" even after installing
5.6.1, but if your "/usr/bin/perl" is a different version from
"/usr/local/bin/perl", you may be in for a world of hurt.
* httpd.conf errors.
After you "install-slashsite", you're told that you probably want to
add "Include /usr/local/slash/httpd/slash.conf" to its httpd.conf.
Note that that file Include's your site-specific conf file at
/usr/local/slash/site/sitename/sitename.conf. One way or another
those site-specific directives have to be processed by Apache.
Are you doing virtual hosting? Make sure you've set it up correctly.
* Database authentication issues.
For each dynamic page your Slash site delivers, an Apache httpd
child needs to connect to your MySQL server. There's a chain of
access to get from Apache to MySQL and a number of places where it
can break:
* The Apache child httpd process needs to have read access to your
DBIx/Password.pm module file. That process is probably running
as "nobody:nobody" (or similar). If you don't know where
DBIx/Password.pm was installed, try:
# perl -MDBIx::Password -le 'print $INC{"DBIx/Password.pm"}'
If that fails, it's probably not installed; check also
# locate DBIx/Password.pm | grep perl
Make sure the module is installed and that "nobody:nobody" can
read its .pm file. If you've sharing that file over the network,
did you set up ownership correctly?
(If you are concerned about security on a multiuser system,
first, don't let people on your system you don't trust, and
second, you may wish to chmod DBIx/Password.pm 750, give it a
group, and set Apache to run with that group.)
* The DBIx/Password.pm file needs to be correctly configured. Open
it up with a text editor and make sure $virtual1 contains an
entry for your Slash virtual user that is correct in every
respect: driver, (MySQL) username, database, password, host, and
connect string. These are the values you typed in when you
installed the module but maybe you made a typo.
If you have only one machine for your whole setup, host can be
"localhost". Otherwise use an IP number.
* Network connectivity.
Can the Apache machine connect to the MySQL machine?
* MySQL permissions.
The username field in your DBIx/Password.pm file refers to a
MySQL user which you set up in step 1 of the Installation
Procedure. Make sure this user has permission to connect to the
Slash site's database you also set up in step 1 (and check it
from the Apache machine over the network too). If you don't
fully understand MySQL permissions, don't guess; start your
reading here:
http://www.mysql.com/documentation/mysql/bychapter/manual_MySQL_
Database_Administration.html#Privilege_system
* mod_gzip