AOLserver Wiki - User contributions [en]

Georg Lehner

2006-11-06T23:28:44Z

Jorge:

mailto:jorge@magma.com.ni

Location: Linz, Austria

Homepage: [http://www.magma.com.ni/ MagmaSoft]

Real Live: Systemadministration and consulting for http://www.webdynamite.com/

Installed/Running Aolserver on:

* http://www.magma.com.ni/
* http://at.anteris.net/
* http://dolehnerts.at/
* http://www.netport.com.ni/
* http://www.uol.edu.ni/
** This on is with dotLRN

I almost exclusively use Debian Gnu/Linux and the Debian Aolserver packages made by
Francesco Paolo Lovergine <frankie AT debian.org>

Also most of my Aolserver installations feature OpenAcs.

----
Aolserver contributions:

* http://www.magma.com.ni/sw/aolserver/
** An Aolserver configuration/run environment for multiple virtual hosts in one server with very easy configuration file(s).
* http://www.magma.com.ni/moin/AolserverMe
** forthcoming: aolserver-me: another configuration/run environment, however more complete

My goal with Aolserver: Aolserver should be (at least) as easy to install and use for the average system administrator as Apache, (incomplete) list of features:
* setup utility
* easy configuration
* basic authentication against several authentication sources
* DAV
* PHP (at least as CGI)
* PostgreSQL (and mySQL?) preconfigured

----
[[Category:Person|Lehner, Georg]]

How to set up WiKit under AOLserver

2006-11-06T23:25:29Z

Jorge:

'' '''Prerequisites:''' ''
* AOLserver 4.0.6 [http://www.aolserver.com/] (currently CVS aolserver_v40_bp branch)
* Tclkit 8.4.6 [http://equi4.com/tclkit.html]
* Wikit 2004/06/08 00:57:42 19564-63131 [http://equi4.com/wikit.html]

'' '''Instructions:''' ''

'''Step 1. Build and install Tcl and AOLserver.'''

You can use a binary distribution of Tcl provided it is a threaded build of Tcl, and build AOLserver with it.

Building both Tcl and AOLserver is outside the scope of this document and should be covered in a separate document.

'''Step 2. Create directories for the wiki..'''

Assuming that your AOLserver is installed in "/home/aolserver" (if it isn't, obviously replace that with the relevant path for your installation) and that you will start with the "sample-config.tcl" that comes standard with AOLserver, we should create a place to install the wiki-related files. Lets do that now:

$ mkdir /home/aolserver/servers/server1/wiki
$ mkdir /home/aolserver/servers/server1/wiki/data

You will only need to make the "wiki/data" directory writable by the user that AOLserver will run as.

Note that these directories do NOT live under the pageroot ("servers/server1/pages" in the sample-config.tcl) but rather at the same level as the pageroot. This is for security reasons.

'''Step 3. Download and install Tclkit and Wikit.'''

Download the latest version of Tclkit and Wikit. At the time of this writing, I tested with Tclkit 8.4.6. You can download binaries for several platforms:
* http://equi4.com/pub/tk/8.4.6/

In this example, the server is running on x86 Linux. Here's how you might download the necessary files:

<pre>
$ cd /home/aolserver/servers/server1/wiki

$ wget -O tclkit-8.4.6-static.gz http://equi4.com/pub/tk/8.4.6/tclkit-linux-x86-static.gz
... [ wget output ] ...

$ gunzip tclkit-8.4.6-static

$ chmod 755 tclkit-8.4.6-static
</pre>

Install Wikit in a similar way:

<pre>
$ cd /home/aolserver/servers/server1/wiki

$ wget http://equi4.com/pub/sk/wikit.kit
</pre>

You will also need a thin wrapper script (see Appendix B at the bottom of this page) that will execute wikit. Copy the script from Appendix B into a file named "wiki.sh" in the "wiki" directory then make it executable.

<pre>
$ cd /home/aolserver/servers/server1/wiki

$ cat <<-'EOF' | sed -e 's/^ //' > wiki.sh
... copy and paste contents of Appendix B ...
EOF

$ chmod 755 wiki.sh
</pre>

That's it! Tclkit and Wikit are now downloaded and installed.

'''Step 4. Configure AOLserver to load CGI support.'''

Starting with the "sample-config.tcl" that comes with AOLserver, you need to make a simple change to enable CGI and configure it to recognize requests for the wiki.

Start by adding the following three lines to the [[nscgi]] module section in your sample-config.tcl:

ns_param map "GET /wiki ${homedir}/servers/${servername}/wiki/wiki.sh"
ns_param map "POST /wiki ${homedir}/servers/${servername}/wiki/wiki.sh"
ns_param map "HEAD /wiki ${homedir}/servers/${servername}/wiki/wiki.sh"

This tells AOLserver to execute "wiki/wiki.sh" for requests to the server where the URL starts with "/wiki". This invokes our thin wrapper script.

Next, we need to instruct AOLserver to actually load the [[nscgi]] module by uncommenting the appropriate line in the "modules" section (around line 449 after inserting the three ns_params above):

ns_section "ns/server/${servername}/modules"
...
ns_param nscgi ${bindir}/nscgi.so
...

'''Step 5. Start AOLserver, and enjoy!'''

That's all there is to it. Start up your server, fire up your web browser and point it at your server:

http://www.aolserver.com/wiki

(Replace "www.aolserver.com" with your IP or the hostname of your server.)

You should get back the home page of your new wiki!

----

'''Before using any of the files in the appendix, you will need to remove the first whitespace character from the beginning of each line, as those were inserted so that the wiki will display them as preformatted text.'''

'''Appendix A. Patch to sample-config.tcl.'''

<pre>
--- sample-config.tcl 2004-06-14 20:18:19.000000000 -0400
+++ wiki-config.tcl 2004-06-23 16:48:23.000000000 -0400
@@ -352,6 +352,9 @@
#ns_param map "GET /cgi /usr/local/cgi" ;# CGI script file dir (GET).
#ns_param map "POST /cgi /usr/local/cgi" ;# CGI script file dir (POST).

+ns_param map "GET /wiki ${homedir}/servers/${servername}/wiki/wiki.sh"
+ns_param map "POST /wiki ${homedir}/servers/${servername}/wiki/wiki.sh"
+ns_param map "HEAD /wiki ${homedir}/servers/${servername}/wiki/wiki.sh"

#
# Modules to load
@@ -360,7 +363,7 @@
ns_section "ns/server/${servername}/modules"
ns_param nssock ${bindir}/nssock.so
ns_param nslog ${bindir}/nslog.so
- #ns_param nscgi ${bindir}/nscgi.so
+ ns_param nscgi ${bindir}/nscgi.so
#ns_param nsperm ${bindir}/nsperm.so

#
</pre>

'''Appendix B. wiki.sh wrapper script.'''

<pre>
#!/bin/sh

DIR=`dirname $0`
cd $DIR/data

WIKIT_BASE=${WIKIT_BASE:-http://${HTTP_HOST}${SCRIPT_NAME}/}
export WIKIT_BASE

$DIR/tclkit-8.4.6-static $DIR/wikit.kit
</pre>

[[Category:Documentation]]
[[Category:Tutorial]]

How to generate self-signed SSL certificates

2006-11-06T23:25:09Z

Jorge:

(Originally copied from [http://pascal.scheffers.net/patch/openssl.txt] by Pascal Scheffers.)

__NOTOC__

== Create a key file ==

$ openssl genrsa -out key.pem 1024

To create a certificate request with that key, you will need to answer some questions. The most important one is "Common Name" which MUST be the hostname of the server you're creating a certificate for. Only "Common Name" is required, for the SSL-RFC, but your Certificate Authority (Verisign, Thawte, etc.) will require some of the other fields. Just fill them all out, to be safe. The last two questions may be required for the registration procedure of some certificate authorities.

$ openssl req -new -key key.pem -out request.pem

Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:NL
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:
Locality Name (eg, city) []:Zeist
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:Pascal's OpenACS Project
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:.
Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:pascal.scheffers.net
Email Address []:pascal@scheffers.net

Please enter the following 'extra' attributes
to be sent with your certificate request
A challenge password []:
An optional company name []:

You can now send the request.pem file to some commercial Certificate Authority and wait for the certificate, or create your own "self-signed" certificate for testing purposes.

To create the self-signed certificate, do the following:

$ openssl req -x509 -days 30 -key key.pem -in request.pem -out certificate.pem

'''Update:''' This may be wrong. The right way may be:

$ openssl x509 -req -days 30 -in request.pem -signkey key.pem -out certificate.pem

Now you have a self-signed certificate.

When you get your actual certificate from the CA, you may have to convert it from binary/DER to PEM format:

$ openssl x509 -inform der -in certificate.crt -out certificate.pem

== Obtaining a server certificate with Internet Explorer ==

Most Certificate Authorities have an website that lets you request a certificate with Internet Explorer. It is very simple to convert such a certificate to a cert.pem and key.pem file. After you have obtained the certificate (do make sure that you keep the key exportable when you request the certificate!), you must first export it to a file:

From internet explorer, open the Tools menu, and choose Internet options.
On the 'Content' tab click the 'Certificates' button. Select your server certificate and click 'export'.

Select that you want to export the private key, on the .PFX options, DO NOT include all certificate in the path and DO NOT enable strong protection. When asked to, provide a nice and long password if you need to transfer the resulting certificate.pfx file over email.

Now on your server machine:

$ cd /home/aolserver/servers/server1/modules/nsopenssl
$ openssl pkcs12 -nodes -in certificate.pfx -out certificate.pem

The resulting certificate.pem will contain both the certificate AND the key. You can either remove the key from this file and put it in a key.pem file or do as I do: change the keyfile parameter in your config.tcl from ".../key.pem" to ".../certificate.pem", so that the server looks in certificate.pem for both the key AND certificate.

== Credits ==

This document was written by Pascal Scheffers (pascal@scheffers.net) for the OpenACS project. I relied on the documentation efforts of the people from the OpenSSL project and the nsopenssl readme.txt. Thank you.

The subset of this document on the wiki was edited by [[Dossy Shiobara]].

== See also ==

* [[SSL]]

[[Category:Documentation]]
[[Category:Tutorial]]

Minimal AOLserver Configuration

2006-11-06T23:07:43Z

Jorge:

= the bare minimum =

The following is the absolute minimum configuration needed to run AOLserver, it is meant to run chrooted and prepared
to run several virtual hosts, each one named the same as its fully qualified domain name:

ns_section ns/parameters
ns_param home /
ns_param servername "Main AOLserver instance"
ns_param user www-data
ns_param group www-data
ns_param serverlog /log/error.log
ns_param pidfile /log/pid

ns_section ns/servers
ns_param localhost "local Website"

ns_section ns/server/localhost
ns_param directoryfile index.html
ns_param pageroot /localhost/www

ns_section ns/server/localhost/tcl
ns_param library /localhost/tcl

ns_section ns/server/localhost/module/nssock
ns_param port 8000
ns_param hostname localhost
ns_param address 127.0.0.1

ns_section ns/server/localhost/module/nslog
ns_param file /localhost/log/access.log

ns_section ns/server/localhost/modules
ns_param nssock nssock.so
ns_param nslog nslog.so

If this is put into the file <code>main.tcl</code> AOLserver can be run with the following commandline:

aolserver-nsd -u www-data -g www-data -b localhost:8000 -r /var/www/main -t main.tcl

= real live example =

Now comes the same stuff pepped up a little; it's the configuration I actually use
for my testing and playground installation of AOLserver on my notebook.

Added are
* comments
* variables for illustration/clarity
* an option to run either chrooted or non-chrooted
* cgi-module configuration

I also use FHS compatibility for filenames and directories (FHS: directory naming convention invented by Linux distributors)

== Configuration file ==

# Configuration Variables
set instance main
set description "Main Aolserver Instance"

set domain localhost
set domain_description "local Website"
set address 127.0.0.1
set port 8000

set debug false
set chroot true

# empty home results in / as server home, which is
# what we want after chroot-ing
set home [expr {$chroot ? "" : "/var/lib/aolserver/$instance"}]

# AOLserver configuration starts here, no user servicable parts inside

ns_section ns/parameters

# The following is not required, debugging defaults to false
ns_param debug $debug

ns_param home ${home}/
ns_param servername $description
ns_param user www-data
ns_param group www-data
ns_param serverlog $home/log/error.log
ns_param pidfile $home/log/pid

ns_section ns/servers
ns_param $domain $domain_description

ns_section ns/server/$domain
ns_param directoryfile index.html
ns_param pageroot $home/$domain/www

ns_section ns/server/$domain/tcl
ns_param library $home/$domain/tcl

ns_section ns/server/$domain/module/nssock
ns_param port $port
ns_param hostname $domain
ns_param address $address

ns_section ns/server/$domain/module/nslog
ns_param file $home/$domain/log/access.log

ns_section ns/server/$domain/module/nscgi
ns_param map "GET /cgi-bin $home/cgi-bin"
ns_param map "POST /cgi-bin $home/cgi-bin"
ns_param map "GET /xx"

ns_section "ns/server/$domain/modules"
ns_param nssock nssock.so
ns_param nslog nslog.so
ns_param nscgi nscgi.so

== Command line ==

You can run AOLserver chrooted with this configuration file (name it <code>main.tcl</code>)
using the following commandline:

aolserver-nsd -u www-data -g www-data \
-b localhost:8000 \
-r /var/lib/aolserver4/main \
-t main.tcl

or not chrooted (<code>set chroot false</code> in <code>main.tcl</code>):

aolserver-nsd -u www-data -g www-data \
-b localhost:8000 \
-t main.tcl

if running under supervise or inetd add the "-f" switch to the commandline

= Adding a virtual host =

lets say we add <code>www.local</code> as an alias for the loopback interface (127.0.0.1)
to experiment with virtual hosts. I will show how to do it with the bare minimum configuration

"Register" the new virtual host:
...
ns_section ns/servers
ns_param localhost "local Website"
ns_param www.local "A second Website"
...

And add the following at the bottom of <code>main.tcl</code>
...
ns_section ns/server/www.local
ns_param directoryfile index.html
ns_param pageroot /www.local/www

ns_section ns/server/www.local/tcl
ns_param library /www.local/tcl

ns_section ns/server/www.local/module/nssock
ns_param port 8000
ns_param hostname www.local
ns_param address 127.0.0.1

ns_section ns/server/www.local/module/nslog
ns_param file /www.local/log/access.log

= Chroot requirements =

Here is an excerpt of the files I needed to copy into the chroot to get
the server running:

/var/lib/aolserver4/main/bin/nslog.so
/var/lib/aolserver4/main/bin/nssock.so
/var/lib/aolserver4/main/bin/init.tcl
...
of course I copied the whole modules directory, not only the above
...
/var/lib/aolserver4/main/dev/null
/var/lib/aolserver4/main/etc/group
...
the contents of the <code>group</code> file is:
www-data:x:33:
...
/var/lib/aolserver4/main/etc/localtime
/var/lib/aolserver4/main/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive
/var/lib/aolserver4/main/usr/lib/tcl8.4/encoding/*
...
also, I copied the whole encoding directory of the tcl8.4 distribution, I guess, that only some of the
files are really needed
...
/var/lib/aolserver4/main/proc
/var/lib/aolserver4/main/modules/tcl/init.tcl

see also: http://www.magma.com.ni/moin/AolserverMe, for my experiences while checking out these things.

----
[[Category:Configuration]]

Minimal AOLserver Configuration

2006-11-06T23:06:42Z

Jorge: /* Chroot requirements */

Minimal AOLserver Configuration

2006-11-06T23:04:37Z

Jorge:

Minimal AOLserver Configuration

2006-11-06T22:55:45Z

Jorge:

Georg Lehner

2006-11-06T22:04:08Z

Jorge:

mailto:jorge@magma.com.ni

Location: Linz, Austria

Homepage: [http://www.magma.com.ni/ MagmaSoft]

Real Live: Systemadministration and consulting for http://www.webdynamite.com/

Installed/Running Aolserver on:

* http://www.magma.com.ni/
* http://at.anteris.net/
* http://dolehnerts.at/
* http://www.netport.com.ni/
* http://www.uol.edu.ni/
** This on is with dotLRN

I almost exclusively use Debian Gnu/Linux and the Debian Aolserver packages made by
Francesco Paolo Lovergine <frankie AT debian.org>

Also most of my Aolserver installations feature OpenAcs.

----
Aolserver contributions:

* http://www.magma.com.ni/sw/aolserver/
** An Aolserver configuration/run environment for multiple virtual hosts in one server with very easy configuration file(s).
* forthcoming: aolserver-me: another configuration/run environment, however more complete

My goal with Aolserver: Aolserver should be (at least) as easy to install and use for the average system administrator as Apache, (incomplete) list of features:
* setup utility
* easy configuration
* basic authentication against several authentication sources
* DAV
* PHP (at least as CGI)
* PostgreSQL (and mySQL?) preconfigured

----
[[Category:Person|Lehner, Georg]]

Georg Lehner

2006-11-06T21:57:07Z

Jorge:

User:Jorge

2006-11-06T21:56:33Z

Jorge: User:Jorge moved to Georg Lehner: for inclusion in Peoples Category

#redirect [[Georg Lehner]]

Georg Lehner

2006-11-06T21:56:33Z

Jorge: User:Jorge moved to Georg Lehner

Georg Lehner

2006-11-06T21:55:48Z

Jorge: