Installation

• A web server, such as Apache-SSL or Apache
• SSH
• Perl Don't enable experimental features like threads or the PerlIO abstraction layer.
• A transactional database engine supported by Perl's DBI. PostgreSQL is recommended. (see the PostgreSQL notes) MySQL's default MyISAM and ISAM table types are not supported. If you really want to use MySQL, you need to use one of the new transaction-safe table types such as BDB.
• Perl modules (CPAN will query, download and build perl modules automatically)
  • Array-PrintCols
  • Term-Query (make test broken; install manually)
  • MIME-Base64
  • Digest-MD5
  • URI
  • HTML-Parser
  • libnet
  • Locale-Codes
  • Net-Whois
  • libwww-perl
  • Business-CreditCard
  • Data-ShowTable
  • MailTools
  • TimeDate
  • DateManip
  • File-CounterFile
  • FreezeThaw
  • String-Approx
  • Text-Template
  • DBI
  • DBD for your database engine
  • DBIx-DBSchema
  • Net-SSH
  • Net-SCP

• Add the user `freeside' to your system.
• Allow the freeside user full access to the freeside database.
  • with MySQL:

    $ mysqladmin -u root password 'set_a_root_database_password'
    $ mysql -u root -p
    mysql> GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,INDEX,ALTER,CREATE,DROP on freeside.* TO freeside@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'set_a_freeside_database_password';

  • with PostgreSQL
• Add the freeside database to your database engine. (with MySQL) (with PostgreSQL)
• Unpack the tarball:

  gunzip -c fs-x.y.z.tar.gz | tar xvf -

• Build and install the Perl libraries:

  $ cd FS/
  $ perl Makefile.PL
  $ make
  $ su
  # make install UNINST=1

• Copy or link fs-x.y.z/htdocs to your web server's document space.

  mkdir /usr/local/apache/htdocs/freeside
  cp -r fs-x.y.z/htdocs/* /usr/local/apache/htdocs/freeside

  or

  ln -s /full/path/to/fs-x.y.z/htdocs /usr/local/apache/htdocs/freeside

• Restrict access to this web interface. (with Apache)
• Enable CGI execution for files with the `.cgi' extension. (with Apache)
• Set ownership and permissions for the web interface. The web interface needs to run as the freeside user - there are several ways to do this.
  • Use Perl's setuid emulation: see the Security Bugs section of the perlsec manpage.

    cd /usr/local/apache/htdocs/freeside
    chown -R freeside .
    chmod 4755 browse/*.cgi edit/*.cgi edit/process/*.cgi misc/*.cgi misc/process/*.cgi search/*.cgi view/*.cgi

  • Use Apache's suEXEC.

    cd /usr/local/apache/htdocs/freeside
    chown -R freeside .
    chmod 755 browse/*.cgi edit/*.cgi edit/process/*.cgi misc/*.cgi misc/process/*.cgi search/*.cgi view/*.cgi

  • Use mod_perl. You should run a separate iteration of Apache[-SSL] as the freeside user. (Warning: The redirect method of CGI.pm 2.36 [as distributed with Perl 5.004_04] is broken under mod_perl. Downlaod the current version from CPAN. Apache 1.3.6 is also highly recommended because of signal handling problems in earlier versions.)

    cd /usr/local/apache/htdocs/freeside
    chown -R root .
    chmod 755 browse/*.cgi edit/*.cgi edit/process/*.cgi misc/*.cgi misc/process/*.cgi search/*.cgi view/*.cgi

• Create the necessary configuration files.
• Create the `/usr/local/etc/freeside/counters.datasrc', and `/usr/local/etc/freeside/export.datasrc' directories for each datasrc (owned by the freeside user).
• As the freeside user, run bin/fs-setup to create the database tables.
• Now proceed to the initial administration of your installation.