With the Linux Operating System, there are three basic options available to you for installing WACS onto your system:
Each option above is progressively more complex than the previous one, but in the process affords more flexibility and configurability. The choice is yours.... On other platforms, you probably want to follow either the manual install proceedure or play with the easyinstall script (but expect to have to change at least package names and installer names in the script).
If you are using a web hosting provider, unless they're offering pre-installed WACS, you will need to follow the manual installation steps. In order to do so, you will need to have SSH access to the server hosting your site, which may have an additional charge and setup delay associated with it. We've added additional commentary in the manual install section of the installation proceedure covering the steps you need to take when working on a web hosting provider.
![[Note]](images/note.png) | Note |
|---|---|
This feature was new in Wacs 0.8.1 and is currently available for
Fedora 10, 11 and 12 based systems using the RPM package manager and for Ubuntu
8.10 LTS, 9.04 and 9.10 systems using the DEB packaging system.
It is our hope to extend the packaged software approach to include other
platforms in a future release.
While we do not prepare packaged versions for older releases of
Fedora and Ubuntu, we do not remove support from them from the packaging
build files ( |
![[Warning]](images/warning.png) | Warning |
|---|---|
Package support for Fedora 10 and Debian 8.10 LTS will be dropped at the next release but replaced with Fedora 13 and Debian 10.04 LTS. |
Where available for a given distribution and release, there are a number of WACS RPM or .deb packages you can make use of to install the WACS system. If you are using one of the more sophisticated package managers (yum, etc), you need only ask it to install the main wacs package and that tells the package manager what other components it needs to complete the install. This will bring in both the system packages needed - web server, database, perl libraries, etc - and the other parts of the WACS system needed for a working installation. If you are using one of the simpler package managers (rpm etc), it will complain about absense of the required packages until all the dependencies have been installed manually.
Since sourceforge.net doesn't yet seem to support YUM or debian repos properly you will have to download the requisite WACS packages manually in order for the install to proceed. We are working on a Personal Package Archive (PPA) area on launchpad.net for Ubuntu .DEB packages which we hope to launch shortly. Please watch the WACS web sites for more details.
| Warning |
|---|---|
In order to conform to the the Fedora packaging guidelines, quite a few of the file locations are different on the packaged version of WACS, from that created by the easyinstall script or manual process. It shouldn't cause problems, but you do need to be aware of it, particularly if moving a configuration file between releases. |
The easyinstall script was our pre-packaging approach to installing WACS and can still be used on Fedora and Ubuntu distributions although now it is mostly useful for installing on older versions of Linux that are not supported directly by the packages we create. As of WACS 0.8.5, the packages are gaining maturity and are probably a better option than the easyinstall command, although it should nevertheless work fine. Additionally easyinstall will prove harder to upgrade than the packaged solutions. Since Wacs 0.8.4, the packaged versions of WACS do include the wacssetup configuration tool to provide a web interface to what easyinstall does but it is fairly new and may still have bugs, so easyinstall is a useful second option if you run into trouble.
This the only option available for any kind of unsupported operating system platform and on a web site hosting provider where you have no root system administrator access and no control over the filesystem layout. The instructions later in this guide take you through all of the tasks needed step by step. This does assume some basic familiarity with command line operation of the Linux/Unix environment and a reasonable knowledge of the software installation policies of the operating system in question. In the case of a web hosting provider, you will need some familiarity with their setup tools and utilities.