Installation Instructions for iAct


COMPILING AND INSTALLING APACHE & MOD_PERL

iAct runs on top of Apache with mod_perl (mod_perl is an Apache module
which embeds a perl interpreter in the webserver).  Although it is
possible to run mod_perl as a Dynamic Shared Object inside Apache, it is
recommended to compile a fresh copy of Apache with mod_perl.

To do this:

1) download Apache 1.3.12 or greater (but within the 1.3 branch)
   from http://www.apache.org/dist/

2) download mod_perl 1.24 or greater (but within the 1.x branch)
   from http://perl.apache.org/dist/

3) Compile Apache and mod_perl with these commands (change version
   numbers where appropriate):

    tar zxvf apache_1.3.12.tar.gz
    tar zxvf mod_perl-1.24.tar.gz 
    cd mod_perl-1.24 
    perl Makefile.PL APACHE_SRC=../apache_1.3.12 DO_HTTPD=1 USE_APACI=1 \
		     PREP_HTTPD=1 EVERYTHING=1
    make
    su
    make install
    (leave the root shell)

    cd ../apache_1.3.12
    OPTIM="-O2" ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache \
			  --activate-module=src/modules/perl/libperl.a \
			  --enable-module=status --enable-module=rewrite
    (add any other Apache modules you might want; change the prefix if
     you want to install Apache somewhere else then /usr/local/apache)

    make
    su
    make install


INSTALLING THE iACT MODULES

First, download and install the modules Tie::Cache (0.08 or above),
Storable (0.6.9 or above) and Digest-MD5 (2.09 or above) from CPAN, if
you don't have them installed already.  

They can be found at
ftp://ftp.cpan.org/CPAN/modules/by-module/Tie/, 
ftp://ftp.cpan.org/CPAN/modules/by-module/Storable/, 
ftp://ftp.cpan.org/CPAN/modules/by-module/Digest/, 
respectively.

Then, install the iAct modules themselves, with the commands:

    cd iact-0.71
    perl Makefile.PL
    make
    make test
    su
    make install


ACTIVATING MOD_PERL AND iACT IN THE APACHE CONFIGURATION

Edit the file /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf, and make the following
changes

1) Set DocumentRoot to point to the root of your web document tree
   eg. DocumentRoot /www/html

2) Configure mod_perl and enable iAct's global handlers, by adding 
   these lines:

     PerlSetupEnv Off
     PerlSendHeader Off
     PerlHandler iA::ContentHandler
     PerlTransHandler iA::TransHandler
     PerlChildInitHandler iA::ChildInitHandler

     # Associate the "ihtml" file extension with iAct.
     AddType text/x-iact-html ihtml
     <FilesMatch "\.ihtml">
       SetHandler perl-script
       PerlHandler iA::ContentHandler
       PerlSetupEnv Off
       PerlSendHeader Off
     </FilesMatch>

     # Associate the "tmpl" file extension with iAct.
     AddType text/x-iact-tmpl tmpl
     <FilesMatch "\.tmpl">
       SetHandler perl-script
       PerlHandler iA::ContentHandler
       PerlSetupEnv Off
       PerlSendHeader Off
     </FilesMatch>

   If your index files are going to be served by iAct, you need to add
   "index.ihtml" to your DirectoryIndex directive, as in:

     DirectoryIndex index.ihtml index.html

   You may want some of the following directives, too (for details
   about mod_perl configuration, see the mod_perl guide at
   http://perl.apache.org/guide/):

     PerlFreshRestart On
     PerlModule Apache::DBI
     PerlRequire /path/to/perlstart.pl


3) Configure iAct itself, by editing the file 
   /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.xxx/iA/Config.pm

   Read through the various parameters, and the comments.


That's it!  Start Apache with "/usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl start",
and iAct should be running.