Requirements

The target system on which you want to install the PDS VEX application server requires the following software packages to be already installed:

• Python version 2.4. You can test if Python is installed on your system by running python -V or python2.4 -V. You should see output similar to Python 2.4.6. You must use version 2.4; later versions, such as 2.5, 2.6, 3.1, will not work.
• Python Imaging Library (PIL) version 1.1.6. You can test if PIL is installed on your system by running: python2.4 -c 'import _imaging'. If you see no output, it's working fine. If you see an error message, then PIL is not properly installed into Python 2.4.

Depending on the target directory for the installation, you may need administrative "root" privileges in order to write to the directory. The PDS VEX application server does not require root privileges to run. It can run under any ordinary user account. During installation, as much as 220 free megabytes of disk space may be required.

Installing the Software

To install the software, follow these steps:

1. Extract the software archive to its final resting place on the target system using the tar utility. Depending on your system, any of the following commands might work:

   • tar xjf pdsvex-app-server.tar.bz2
   • gtar xjf pdsvex-app-server.tar.bz2`
   • bzip2 -dc pdsvex-app-server.tar.bz2 | tar xf -

2. Change the current working directory to the newly extracted directory:

   cd pdsvex-app-server
   

3. Edit the configuration file buildout.cfg using your favorite text editor. There are three settings you may wish to modify, all listed near the top of the file in the [configuration] section:

   • listen-port. This designates the TCP port number on which the application will accept requests for queries. Note that on most systems you will need to run the application server as "root" if you choose a restricted port number (usually port numbers < 1024).
   • admin-username. This is the user name for the administrative account for the application server. It's used if you need to make adjustments to the profile server's underlying application server (for example, to modify logging settings).
   • admin-password. This is the credential that identifies the administrative account.

4. Bootstrap the installer by running:

   python2.4 bootstrap.py
   

5. Build the PDS VEX application server by running:

   bin/buildout
   

   This command will build the server by downloading additional components and therefore requires you have an active internet connection. During installation you may see several error messages about syntax errors regarding "return" being used outside of a function. These are normal and may be ignored.

6. Start the PDS VEX application server by running:

   bin/vexserver start
   

Testing the Installation

An easy way to test the installation is to point a web browser at the application server. For example, if you installed the system on a host named atmos.nmsu.edu and you set the listen-port to 8080, just visit the URL http://atmos.nmsu.edu:8080/pdsvex and you should see a welcome page.

Post-Installation Steps

You may wish to ensure the PDS VEX application server starts at system boot time so that the services it provides are always available. Depending on your operating system, you may need to:

• Create a SysV-style init script in /etc/init.d
• Symlink the bin/vexserver script to /etc/init.d
• Add execution of bin/vexserver start to /etc/rc.local
• Add bin/vexserver start to the @reboot entry of a user's crontab
• Something more exotic

Consult your system administrator and operating system documentation for details.