installation problems

2001-09-24T04:39:57Z

This little chat with Gerald Weber might be of use to
others.

Gerald Weber wrote:

> Some informations/questions about the installation
and use which
> you may find interesting.
>
> I installed SIDB on a Conectiva Linux 7.0, kernel
2.4.
> Postgre version is 7.1
>
> First I had to modify somes files in the sidb
directory changing
> the path /usr/local/httpd/htdocs to
/home/httpd/html and change
> the ownership to nobody.nobody

If you change the ownership of the whole directory
(chown -R nobody *) to the webdaemon (in your case,
nobody) sidb should set those paths right itself (while
running the script 'install.php'.

> Then I created a directory
/home/sidb-images/archive and
> /home/sidb-images/thumbnails
> and set the owner to nobody.nobody whith owner and
group permissions to
> +rwx
> I have set the paths in the install.php
accordingly, but the install
> actually
> installed another archive and thumpnails below each
directory.
> I ended up with /home/sidb-images/archive/archive
and
> /home/sidb-images/thumbnails/thumbnails. This was
easy to correct, but
> probably
> there need to be some correction to install.php.
Whithout this correction
> I
> was not able to see the thumbnails.

That sound like a bug in the install.php script.
I'll look into it.

> Now for a question: are the images in the Gallery
always regenerated?

Yes. Since you can change their size, they are
generated on the fly by the server. If you request the
same size several times, they might be cached by your
browser (or anything in between your browser and
server). I guess that if you have huge images, it make
take a while to generate them..

> During the process of adding users I was not sure
if the user login was
> an existing linux user or if it could be a
different, no exsiting user.
> My doubts arouse because to the attempt to generate
the up/download
> directories in /home/user.

Either is possible. However, to be able to 'move'
files from the up/download directory in user's home
directory, he/she should be a valid user on the system
(the login name in SIDB shoudl be identical to the
user's home directory name). If the user is not a
valid user on teh system, he/she can only
upload/download through html. I am thinking about
adding authentication through LDAP.

> Also it seems that a user can belong only to one
group, can this be
> modified?

True. Regretfully, that is how it has been set
uup,and it will be quite a bit of work to change that.
You can kind of get around it by making a user an
'auditor' in another group so that he/sh can see all
the images that belong to that group on top of the ones
that belong to his/her own group.

> Finally I have troubles with the logout process.
When I try to logout I
> get a
> pop-up windows asking for authentication. Even if I
provide a valid
> username/password
> I get an error message. I can only get out by
pressing cancel during the
> authentication
> process. However, if I try to login immediately
again I am not asked for
> authentication.

This is a general problem with the http
authentification method that is being used. The
problem is that to logout you have to 'fool' your
browser. Every time you request a page the browsers
send the username/password. When you press logout, the
server tells the browser that the username/password
were wrong (the server is lying!). Most browsers will
remember the username/password however, so unless you
enter a 'wrong' username/password to fool
your browser the browser will be able to login again.
I know, it is ugly, but a lot of work to change it.

> When I used "save all N images" I received the
message:
> Warning: Missing argument 2 for savesearchresult()
> in /home/httpd/html/sidb/search.php on line 342

A buglet, I'll look into it. You can switch off
warnings in your php.ini file.

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