Installation

• A web server, such as Apache-SSL or Apache
• SSH
• Perl (at least 5.004_05 for the 5.004 series or 5.005_03 for the 5.005 series. Don't enable experimental features like threads or the PerlIO abstraction layer.)
• A database engine supported by Perl's DBI, such as MySQL or PostgreSQL (verstion 6.5 or higher) (see the PostgreSQL notes)
• Perl modules (CPAN will query, download and build perl modules automatically)
  • Array-PrintCols
  • Term-Query (make test broken; install manually)
  • MIME-Base64
  • Data-Dumper
  • 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

• Add the user `freeside' to your system.
• Add the freeside database to your database engine. (with MySQL) (with PostgreSQL)
• 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
• 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

• 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.