Operating BSCW on Unix

Running BSCW on a Unix system generally requires little administrative effort. However, there are a few things that should be taken into consideration when installing and configuring the BSCW system.

Note: Below are some general hints on installation and operation of BSCW servers. Further details are provided in the Administrator Manual which should be read when installing a BSCW server.

BSCW installation

We recommend installation of the BSCW software as a normal user (e.g., under a special administrator ID 'bscw' and not as 'root'!). It doesn't matter where you install BSCW, but the host machine of the HTTP server you wish to use must have access to the file system where BSCW is installed. We also recommend that you perform the set-up on this host, because set-up will also start the BSCW database server that must run on the same host as the web server.

For optimal performance, install BSCW on a file system local to the host where your web server runs. The BSCW directory should not be accessible via the DocumentRoot of your web server, however.

The BSCW CGI scripts invoked by your web server will run with the setgid bit set. This means access rights will be inherited during execution. The directory, including all files and sub-directories, should belong to this group.

Note: Some Unix systems (for example Linux) refuse to execute scripts with set-group-id. In this case you have to install a binary wrapper (BSCW set-up should do this automatically).

Configuration

The configuration includes your web server and the BSCW server. Furthermore, server administrator registration should be considered part of the initial configuration process.

Configuring your BSCW server requires editing a number of configuration files (see the admin manual for details). Most changes in the configuration files take immediate effect.

In case of any configuration problems, you may instruct BSCW to check the configuration by invoking the command

$ bsadmin chkconfig

Administration

The BSCW-System includes its own database server. The database server is operated via commandline (shell script: bsadmin). The most important commands are

$ ./start_servers
starts the BSCW-Server

$ ./start_servers -k 
stops the BSCW-Server

$ ./start_servers -gc 
runs the garbage collector
(the database server must be running)

$ bsadmin 
shows further commands.

It is recommended to start the BSCW-Server automatically. Furthermore the garbage collection should be automated to run periodically (e.g. on a daily basis).

Web server

To configure your web server, you must edit your HTTP server configuration file and restart the server. For the Apache server, the BSCW set-up process will automatically generate a configuration file (apache.conf). In case of configuration changes to your BSCW server (e.g. modified script names), you may need to update this configuration file by invoking the command:

$ bsadmin conf_apache

We recommend to include the contents of this file in your Apache configuration file (http.conf) by using the following directive

Include "<...>/apache.conf"

Additional configuration tips are provided in the README.