Install problems flowchart

[Steve D. <sd...@sw...>]

I hope this helps those having problems.  Fact is, it's not real easy to tell
what someone may have done wrong, but I think if all of the below works, you
should be set.

Installation and configuration is distribution specific and I'll defer some
things here to source/distro documentation.

If anyone wants to help fill in the blanks or make this prettier, maybe it
will make a nice troubleshooting guide that could be distributed with the
code.

If you don't know you're ok on each of these steps, there is no sense going
further, because things won't work.

Step 1.  Are the following programs installed?
1 - Perl, 5+ (depends on DBI version)
2 - http server (Apache, dnhttpd, NCSA, httpi, ...)
3 - SQL Server with transaction support (PostgreSQL 6.5+, ...)
4 - DBD (DBD-Pg, ...)
5 - DBI
6 - Sql-ledger (unpack at DocumentRoot from Step 4.)

If yes, go to step 2., else, install them and proceed.

Step 2.  Are the required programs running?
issue command:
ps aux

you should see similar lines to the following in with the rest of the output
USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
postgres   xxx      0.0         0.1  5616  348 ?                 S    Jul15
0:04 /usr/lib/postgres
root           xxx      0.0         0.7  3720 1384 ?                S
Jul15   0:05 /usr/sbin/apache

If yes, go to step 3., else start them and check your startup scripts if you
want them to start on boot and proceed.

Step 3. Is postgres configured for tcp/ip connectivity?
issue command:
psql -h 127.0.0.1 -d template1

if you get the prompt;
template1=#
you are connected to template1 thru the localhost with tcp/ip - go to step 4.
else
configure postgres for tcp/ip connectivity (see docs), or check that you
haven't removed the localhost from your system (I bellieve all distro's ship
with localhost enabled) and proceed.

Step 4.  Is Apache's httpd.conf configured properly?  Adjust for web servers
other than Apache as appropriate.
Main lines (see http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/directives.html for more info
on Apache's runtime directives)

#Tells Apache the VALID DNS server name for your web server (this could also
be "127.0.0.1" or "localhost").
ServerName www.sql-ledger.com

#This directive sets the directory from which httpd will serve files. Unless
matched by a directive like Alias, the #server appends the path from the
requested URL
#to the document root to make the path to the document. Example (note NO
trailing /). This points requests for #http://www.sql-ledger.com to
/usr/local/www
DocumentRoot /usr/local/www

#tells Apache that perl scripts are executables AND to execute them
AddHandler cgi-script .pl

#opens document root to public and redirects requests for files in sql-ledger/
to the files #in/usr/local/www/sql-ledger/.  The "Directory" should be
Apache's DocumentRoot with sql-ledger appended to #the end (Note NO trailing /
again).
  Alias /sql-ledger/ /usr/local/www/sql-ledger/
  <Direcory /usr/local/www/sql-ledger>
    Options ExecCGI Includes FollowSymlinks
  </Directory>

Now type in the server name from above into your browser location like below:
http://www.sql-ledger.com
and you should see index.html in your browser, or a directory listing of
DocumentRoot if index.html doesn't exist in that directory.

If that works, go to step 5,
else correct Apache (or other web server) config and proceed.

Step 5. Are permissions set correctly?
Sql-Ledger should unpack with the appropriate permissions except you want to
change users as below

chmod 777 users templates
chmod 666 users/members

If you've got everything working here step by step, you should be installed
and ready to create the db and visit admin and login per the bottom of the
installation instructions (see http://www.sql-ledger.com/source/readme.txt).

It seems like most breakdowns are occuring somewhere in these first five
steps, so I hope this helps.

Please let me know if I've overlooked anything or sql-ledger still doesn't
work if you've gone through these steps.

Good luck!
Steve