Installing Greenstone Digital Library Software on Linux Systems
Jaba Das, A.R.D. Prasad · 2003
This paper presents a step-by-step approach to install GSDL on Linux system. Paper: R Jaba Das and ARD Prasad NOTE: Bold and italicized are the commands to be entered at Linux prompt i.e. ‘$’. 1. Before you start the installation process, make sure you have the directory public_html. Also make sure, your administrator has configured the Apache Web server so that your Personal Home Page is pointed to this directory. If it is done, any body can access your home page using the URL of your site followed by a slash, tilde and your login id. For example, to access my home page, one can use the following URL http://drtc.isibang.ac.in/~ard 2. Enter the following URL to go to the Greenstone Digital Library (GSDL) home site www.greenstone.org/english/download.html On the web page in the indention, you will find “Unix Distribution (23 MB), which is hyper-linked to the file gsdl-2.38-linux.tar.gz. The hyper-link takes you to the Source Forge site. From Source Forge site, you can download the required file. You can also use the following URL directly avoiding your visit to Greenstone Home page http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/greenstone/gsdl-2.38-linux.tgz This file is compressed using GNU (GNU is Not Unix) compression software and also ‘tared’. 3. Copy (or download) the file into your home directory. The home directory is the directory you will be placed, when you login. 4. To unzip and untar the file use the following command tar zxvf gsdl-2.38-linux.tar.gz 5. The above command creates the directory gsdl-2.38-linux and places all the required directories and files of Greenstone software in that directory. 6. Go the gsdl-2.38-linux directory with the following command cd gsdl-2.38 -linux/Unix 7. In this directory, issue either of the following commands sh Install.sh or ./Install.sh 8. You will be asked a number of questions which can be answered intuitively. However some of the important questions and the answers are given below Q: Enter the directory to install Greenstone into. A gsdl directory will be created in this directory [/home/your-login-id] Ans: /home/your-login-id/public_html (my login id, for example, is ‘ard’) Q: You may either install pre-compiled, statically linked linux [b]inaries (i386 only) or install and [c]ompile the Greenstone source code. Enter “[b]” or “c”. Ans : Enter b or just press the enter key (default). Installing Greenstone Digital Library......... Paper: R Note: Do not attempt to use the “c” option, unless you are an expert in compiling software Q: The default Greenstone cgi-bin directory ... Enter [1] or 2 Ans: Enter 1 or just press the enter key (default) Note: You should ask the system administrator to change the Apache Web configuration, which will be explained in the next section. Q: Enter the web address of the home/your-login-id/public_html/gsdl/cgi-bin directory ... Ans: http://drtc.isibang.ac.in/~ard/gsdl/cgi-bin Note: The above is only an example, in your case you may use the domain name of your website, followed tilde, your-login-id, gsdl and cgi-bin (each separated by ‘/’). Q: In order for Greenstone to run ... Enter [1] or 2 Ans: Enter 1 or just press the enter key The questions that follow are fairly self-explanatory. Once all the questions are answered, you will be out of the installation process and see the “$” again, which indicates the completion of installation. APACHE CONFIGURATION The Apache configuration can only be done by the system administrator. However, you should inform him of your requirements. The Apache configuration file is normally stored in /etc/httpd/conf and the file name is httpd.conf Firstly, make sure, that your ‘public_html’ directory is accessible though a browser. For this open the httpd.conf file and uncomment the following lines UserDir public_html Secondly, make sure the programs in the cgi-bin directory of your gsdl installation are excutable through the web browsers. To achieve the following line should be present in the httpd.conf file ScriptAliasMatch ^/~[^/]*/(.*)/cgi-bin/(.*) “/home/$1/public_html/ $2/cgi-bin/$3” Lastly, you should run the following command as super user /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart If everything is done as expected, open a web browser and enter the following URL: http://your-domain-name/~your-login-id/gsdl/cgi-bin/libray You should the see the Greenstone front page and it will be accessible on the Internet through out the world!