INSTALLATION
Installation of colplot involves copying the appropriate files to the the
target directories and configuring the web server appropriately. If you've
installed the rpm on a linux system running apache, the default web server for
many distros, the first part has already been accomplished for you and if on
a pc, you'll need to select an appropriate directory and copy the components
to it manually.
If you've simply executed the INSTALL command after unpacking the tarball on a
redhat, debian or SuSe distro, the files will also be copied into the correct
locations. Since things do occasionally change with newer versions of a distro,
there is also a possibility that target directories, both for the rpm as well
as the tarball could have changed so if this happens be sure to let me know.
The configuration of the web server is what the remainder of this document focuses on.
Colplot will run on both linux and windows as well as with web and command line
interfaces. This can complicate the installation since there are a number of
different web servers, each of which can be configured in its own unique way.
In fact, even if you are running one of the web servers whose installations
will be described below, local configurations may prevent following these
instructions and additional work may be required. However, if you're running
versions of Apache (on linux) or IIS (in windows) that have not been heavily
customized, these instructions should work just fine.
There are two major steps after installing the RPM or moving the sources to the
desired directory:
- configure the web server
- configure colplot itself
PREREQUISITES
See the 'Utilities' section of colplot.conf. If you've installed your linux
system using 'standard' locations for the web server and system utilities, most
of the configuration work is already done for you. On a pc the only utility
that is required is gnuplot and it has its own special section further on.
If you want to generate PDF files on your PC you will also need GhostScript.
see http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/AFPL/get851.htm.
However, if you built your apache web server from source, the default locations
will not match those in the rpm and so you'll have to change a few things
around to get things working. More on that later.
CONFIGURE THE WEB SERVER
These instructions will explain how to configure your webserver such that you
can then run colplot via the url -- http://address/colplot
Apache and Apache2
The assumption is you've installed colplot from the rpm in which case both /usr/bin/colplot
and /etc/coloplot.conf will have been installed and any additional files
will be have placed under the /usr/share/collectl tree. Several assumptions have been made
about how the web server has been configured based on the distro according to the following:
Distro Version WebRoot ConfFileLoc ApacheStart
RedHat /var/www/html /etc/httpd/conf.d apachectl
SuSe /srv/www/htdocs /etc/apache2/conf.d apache2ctl
Debian /var/www /etc/apache2/sites-available apachectl
/etc/apache2/sites-enabled
The installation creates the directory colplot/ under the document
root and places 4 soft links in that directory, pointing back to the associated
files in the /opt/hp/collectl tree. The following shows those links on a
RedHat installation:
colplot-help.html -> /opt/hp/collectl/docs/colplot-help.html
FAQ-colgui.html -> /opt/hp/collectl/docs/FAQ-colgui.html
FAQ-colplot.html -> /opt/hp/collectl/docs/FAQ-colplot.html
index.cgi -> /opt/hp/collectl/sbin/colplot.pl
if an apache webserver, the next step is to place another link in apache's conf
directory for config files to be included at start up. If an apache2 webserver,
the conf file is copied to the sites-available drectory and a soft link placed in
the sites-enabled directory pointing back to the sites-available conf file.
If you're not on one of these distros but running apache or apache2, you may need
to perform these steps manually.
The apache configuration itself consists of a single stanza enabling access to the
colplot directory that was just created under the document root and begins with the
following line, again on a redhat system:
<Directory "/var/www/html/colplot">
On a SuSE or Debian system the directory is changed to point to a different path but
the contents of the rest of the stanza remains the same. So if you are manually
configuring your environment be sure to modify this first line accordingly.
Finally restart the web server with the command "apachectl restart" or
"apache2ctl restart" as appropriate for your installation.
IIS
The assumption here is that IIS has indeed been installed and started.
Create a directory which will hold the colplot kit and copy the contents to it.
From 'Computer Management', [what is the standard way to get here?] right click
on "Service and Applications -> Internet Information Service -> Web Sites ->
Default Web Site -> New -> Virtual Directory". This will bring up the virtual
directory creation wizard.
1 - under Alias enter 'colplot'
2 - for Directory select the directory you placed colplot into
3 - check the box granting 'Execute' permission
4 - stop/start the web server
CONFIGURING COLPLOT
Locate the colplot.conf file which should be in the same directory as colplot.
On linux systems running apache, most settings will already be correct.
There are 4 sets of parameter:
- directories
- utilities
- gnuplot
- plot defaults
Directories
HelpDir - This is actually prepended to '/colplot-help.html' and on a standard
apache webserver running on linux, there is nothing to do. However if running
an IIS server and you have colplot-help.html installed in the same directory as
colplot.pl, make sure you specify "HelpDir=".
PlotDir - specifies the default directory that contains plot files. If you
don't have at least one such file in this directory, you will get an error
when you try to access colplot either from the command line OR web server.
UTILITIES
Since mail only works on a linux box, you only need to get GhostScript. If
you don't install GhostScript, colplot will still work but you won't be able
to save any plots as PDFs.
GnuPlot
This is the one core utility needed to make colplot run and like the other
utilities is a standard part of linux. However, this is something that must
be installed to run colplot on a PC which you can get at
http://www.gnuplot.info/. NOTE - on a pc you must set gnuplot's version
number as well.
Some older versions of gnuplot don't support 'png' output. If you're
running linux be sure the gnuplot you're running has png support built in.
You can easily determine if this is a problem before installing colplot by running
gnuplot and entering the command 'set terminal png and see if you get an error message.
Once you're installed colplot you can simply run 'colplot -v' and you will see
something like:
colplot: V4.6.3, gnuplot: V:4.4[png,x11]
which shows gnuplot is configured to support both pgn and X, the latter being required
to run the CLI.
