All right. I've posted this elsewhere; maybe this will be seen faster. The equipment used for the SunQuest conventions are three PC's, with processors of 200 mHz, 500 mHz and 800 mHz processors, running Win 98 2nd Edition. Most have over 128 megs of memory. Each has a standard inkjet printer, and have 10/100 cards to network through a switcher.
Now for the problem of installing, since I'm not a system engineer or a sysop. I'm a TV engineer with some experience in building systems, setting them up, et cetera.
1) I understand that I must install Apache for Windows, MySQL and PHP on at least one machine. Do these need any additional configuring to run, besides the stuff listed on the site, or am I going to have to hire a Microsoft Certifiable Satanic Engineer to set this stuff up?
2) Is the above installation, plus ConMaster, all I need to run the system on one computer?
3) Is it possible for our other computers to run on the same system by accessing the server computer on the network? Or do I need to install the entire software package on each machine?
Thanks in advance for the help.
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>The equipment used for the SunQuest conventions are three PC's, with processors of 200 mHz, 500 mHz and 800 mHz processors, running Win 98 2nd Edition. Most have over 128 megs of memory. Each has a standard inkjet printer, and have 10/100 cards to network through a switcher.
That should be plenty of power for the new ConMaster.
>1) I understand that I must install Apache for Windows, MySQL and PHP on at least one machine. Do these need any additional configuring to run, besides the stuff listed on the site, or am I going to have to hire a Microsoft Certifiable Satanic Engineer to set this stuff up?
<grin> It took me about 30 minutes, including download, to install all three pieces on my Win2K box. All of the product's installers are very easy to use if you follow their directions closely, except perhaps for MySQL, and if you follow the directions I posted for getting that going, it isn't too hard either. I will take some playing to make sure it all works totally smoothly, but it isn't really that tough. I'm happy to help get it going, and there are a lot of resources on the internet supporting all three products.
I'm looking to see if anyone makes a windoze mega-installer that installs all three server pieces at once, but I haven't found one yet.
Given that these are all open source products, the installers tend to be a little rough around the edges.
> 2) Is the above installation, plus ConMaster, all I need to run the system on one computer?
You also need a web browser. I suggest MSIE v 6.0+ I hate to say that, but right now it offers the best support for printing and JavaScript. Netscape 6.1+ and Mozilla 1.0+ are also OK, but Netscape 4.x is pretty bad.
You also should install phpMyAdmin 2.3.0 (which you can find here on SourceForge), and installing it is as simple as unzipping it into your Apache docs directory and editing the config file to set the absolute URI to http://localhost/phpMyAdmin and setting your MySQL password. You will have to do some MySQL administration to get things working - you need to at least set an admin password and run the create_all.sql script to build the ConMaster database. You can do that admin with the tools that come with MySQL, but phpMyAdmin is accessible from any machine on the network, and it also lets the SQL-savvy build lovely reports. :)
> 3) Is it possible for our other computers to run on the same system by accessing the server computer on the network? Or do I need to install the entire software package on each machine?
It isn't only possible, it's required if you want them to all share the same data. :) All you need on the other machines is the web browser, and your printer drivers.
The nice thing about this architecture is that you can set up one of your boxes as the "server" box, which you can do pre-reg on, and test to your heart's content, and then the other boxes just need to point their web browsers to it when you go multi-user. That does mean you will need to have your network working with TCP/IP (internet) as opposed to just windoze file sharing. That isn't too unusual these days though.
As we near version 1.0 of ConMaster, I will try and build a more bulletproof INSTALL document. The problem with such documents of course is that as Apache, MySQL and PHP come out with new versions, the INSTALL falls quickly out of date, but we try our best. :)
Thanks,
Tim
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
All right. I've posted this elsewhere; maybe this will be seen faster. The equipment used for the SunQuest conventions are three PC's, with processors of 200 mHz, 500 mHz and 800 mHz processors, running Win 98 2nd Edition. Most have over 128 megs of memory. Each has a standard inkjet printer, and have 10/100 cards to network through a switcher.
Now for the problem of installing, since I'm not a system engineer or a sysop. I'm a TV engineer with some experience in building systems, setting them up, et cetera.
1) I understand that I must install Apache for Windows, MySQL and PHP on at least one machine. Do these need any additional configuring to run, besides the stuff listed on the site, or am I going to have to hire a Microsoft Certifiable Satanic Engineer to set this stuff up?
2) Is the above installation, plus ConMaster, all I need to run the system on one computer?
3) Is it possible for our other computers to run on the same system by accessing the server computer on the network? Or do I need to install the entire software package on each machine?
Thanks in advance for the help.
>The equipment used for the SunQuest conventions are three PC's, with processors of 200 mHz, 500 mHz and 800 mHz processors, running Win 98 2nd Edition. Most have over 128 megs of memory. Each has a standard inkjet printer, and have 10/100 cards to network through a switcher.
That should be plenty of power for the new ConMaster.
>1) I understand that I must install Apache for Windows, MySQL and PHP on at least one machine. Do these need any additional configuring to run, besides the stuff listed on the site, or am I going to have to hire a Microsoft Certifiable Satanic Engineer to set this stuff up?
<grin> It took me about 30 minutes, including download, to install all three pieces on my Win2K box. All of the product's installers are very easy to use if you follow their directions closely, except perhaps for MySQL, and if you follow the directions I posted for getting that going, it isn't too hard either. I will take some playing to make sure it all works totally smoothly, but it isn't really that tough. I'm happy to help get it going, and there are a lot of resources on the internet supporting all three products.
I'm looking to see if anyone makes a windoze mega-installer that installs all three server pieces at once, but I haven't found one yet.
Given that these are all open source products, the installers tend to be a little rough around the edges.
> 2) Is the above installation, plus ConMaster, all I need to run the system on one computer?
You also need a web browser. I suggest MSIE v 6.0+ I hate to say that, but right now it offers the best support for printing and JavaScript. Netscape 6.1+ and Mozilla 1.0+ are also OK, but Netscape 4.x is pretty bad.
You also should install phpMyAdmin 2.3.0 (which you can find here on SourceForge), and installing it is as simple as unzipping it into your Apache docs directory and editing the config file to set the absolute URI to http://localhost/phpMyAdmin and setting your MySQL password. You will have to do some MySQL administration to get things working - you need to at least set an admin password and run the create_all.sql script to build the ConMaster database. You can do that admin with the tools that come with MySQL, but phpMyAdmin is accessible from any machine on the network, and it also lets the SQL-savvy build lovely reports. :)
> 3) Is it possible for our other computers to run on the same system by accessing the server computer on the network? Or do I need to install the entire software package on each machine?
It isn't only possible, it's required if you want them to all share the same data. :) All you need on the other machines is the web browser, and your printer drivers.
The nice thing about this architecture is that you can set up one of your boxes as the "server" box, which you can do pre-reg on, and test to your heart's content, and then the other boxes just need to point their web browsers to it when you go multi-user. That does mean you will need to have your network working with TCP/IP (internet) as opposed to just windoze file sharing. That isn't too unusual these days though.
As we near version 1.0 of ConMaster, I will try and build a more bulletproof INSTALL document. The problem with such documents of course is that as Apache, MySQL and PHP come out with new versions, the INSTALL falls quickly out of date, but we try our best. :)
Thanks,
Tim