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Chapter 3

Installation

Copyright © 1995-2005 by   Eric Blanc, Clemens Vonrhein,
Gérard Bricogne and the Buster Development Group.
All rights reserved.


Contents


Installation requirements

The first step of the installation procedure is to select a UNIX account from which the SERVER will run (i.e. the httpd driving the graphical user interface). It is not recommended to use an ordinary user account (which might have special privileges) if other users are going to use the software too. Just use the same account that you usually install your crystallographic software under (but be aware that the httpd is going to run under this account). However, it is not recommended to use the "root" account.

The BDG installation may reside at any point in the file system, but it should be accessible by any MASTER or SLAVE machine at the same mount point. Once the UNIX account and the path have been chosen, the installation can be started.

The required files are:

It is strongly recommended that you download the tutorials too, as well as the various helper applications for all CLIENT machine types you may have on your site.

Please be reminded that BUSTER-TNT and SHARP/autoSHARP rely on the presence of other crystallographic software:


Installation procedure

Please note that it is NOT recommended to install the software under the "root" account! Since you're probably going to run a http server you might get into all kind of trouble regarding permissions and security if you try to do this nevertheless. So just install the software under the same account you normally install software under.

After downloading the various required files, the installation script installBUSTER or installSHARP can be started. The script will try to setup the SERVER installation. If you are fairly confident that most defaults are going to be correct you can start the script with the -f flag - in which case it will accept all (sensible) defaults and only asks if it gets stuck. If you want to not only install the SERVER, but configure the current machine also as MASTER as well as adding the current UNIX user to the database, you can user the -F flag to the script (this is the recommended usage for first-time users, since everything is kept local and under the current UNIX account).

The setup of the various MASTER machines is done with the administrative script newmachine (all administrative scripts reside in the $BDG_home/adm/bin directory and contain some usage information if run without argument or with the '-h' flag). Enabling user accounts is a separate process, using the script newuser. These script - as well as other administrative script - are created during the main installation step.

The local configuration of the site is stored in two main directories:

Note :  you don't need to edit these files by hand. They are usually generated during installation, creation of a new MASTER/SLAVE or addition of a new user account. There are, however, scripts to edit and change every one of these files (e.g. if your path to the CCP4 installation has changed).

SERVER installation

The installation script (installBUSTER or installSHARP) will first ask some general questions about the site and the system administrator. It will then unpack the GUI and the administrative scripts and libraries. It will perform interactive installation of BUSTER-TNT or SHARP/autoSHARP binaries, the installation of CLIENT-side helpers for every supported platform, as well as the installation of the SERVER-side helper (the http daemon).

After the unpacking of files, the script will move on to the configuration part of the installation. This configuration can be changed later using various administrative scripts. The SERVER configuration has two main parts: during the first part, CCP4, MAPMAN (and TNT in the case of BUSTER) are configured. During the second part, the http daemon is configured and (optionally) started. In both cases, the configuration for the current machine, i.e. the SERVER, is written into the database.

If a previous installation is already present in the current directory, the script will use the former installation parameters as defaults for the new one.

It is also possible to fetch ("clone") the configuration of a previous SHARP/autoSHARP or BUSTER-TNT installation from a different directory. However, this will only work with fairly new versions of BUFFET or SUSHI.

If you have a very standard setup and you trust the default values provided by the installation script, you can execute the installBUSTER or installSHARP script with the -f flag. It will go through the whole SERVER installation using all defaults and only prompt for your input if these defaults are not adequate. However, it might be a good idea to only run the script with this flag if you've already done a few installations.


Adding MASTER(s)

New MASTER machines can be added to the installation at any time. If it is done after the initial installation is completed, the script $BDG_home/adm/bin/newmachine must be used for each of the new machines. This script will first gather local information about the machine, install and/or configure BUSTER-TNT or SHARP/autoSHARP and then the other required crystallographic packages.

The configuration script for a new MASTER ($BDG_home/adm/bin/newmachine) must be run either from the MASTER itself or from the SERVER. In the latter case, the BDG UNIX account must have the right to connect to the MASTER machine without password, which may become a security hole. To avoid this situation, just log into the MASTER and run the script from there.

If the binaries are already installed for the new MASTER architecture, unpacking them is not necessary, except if they may not be accessible by the new MASTER. The choice of the location of the expanded binaries is also left to the administrator. Please keep in mind that for every package, one executable is started to check if it runs. If the $BDG_home/.licence file does not contain valid licence information, BUSTER-TNT or SHARP/autoSHARP cannot be installed.

New machines are not automatically available to the existing users. The script newmachine sends an e-mail message to all users to notify them of the new MASTER machine and to give them directions how to enable the new machine.


Creating user accounts

The script $BDG_home/adm/bin/newuser is used to create new user accounts. The BDG user name, the user directory for BUSTER-TNT or SHARP/autoSHARP files and the user's e-mail must be given on the command line. The user directory should be chosen with some care. It is customary to use the home directory of the user (so that everything is stored in a directory ~<user>/sharpfiles or ~<user>/busterfiles), but this is not compulsory. Any directory for which the user has full privileges could be used. If the user wants another location than the attributed one, the BDG system administrator needs only to modify the $BDG_home/users/<user>/${BDG_pgm}fileslink to point to the desired location.

Once the account is created, an e-mail is sent to the user to ask her/him to enable her/his account. This cannot be done by the system administrator because the files will be stored in one of the user's directories.

The BUSTER-TNT and SHARP/autoSHARP files in ~/${BDG_pgm}files/cardfiles, ~/${BDG_pgm}files/savefiles and ~/${BDG_pgm}files/logfiles are in principle owned by the BDG UNIX account. It is possible to change the owner of the directories in ~/${BDG_pgm}files/logfiles using the remote shell job submission capabilities: the user then becomes the owner of the logfile directory. To enable the uid change upon remote shell submission, the user must grant login privileges for the BDG UNIX account, which is clearly a security hole as the BDG system administrator can login to the user's account without password (only from the SERVER machine, though).


Setting up the viewing tools

To display the user's results, BUFFET and SUSHI rely on the mime-type resources of the browser.
  1. The BUFFET/SUSHI SERVER sends a file with a well-defined MIME type to the CLIENT (i.e. the browser).

  2. The CLIENT (browser) maps the MIME type to a UNIX command with its arguments. This mapping is done differently for different browsers. netscape e.g. is using the information in the user's ~/.mailcap file. Other browsers need to be configured by hand, e.g. mozilla needs each handler for a specific mime type to be added using Edit -> Preferences -> navigator -> Helper Applications. The default UNIX command is a script, $BDG_home/bin/helpers.

  3. This script is usually maintained by the BUSTER-TNT or SHARP/autoSHARP system administrator. It uses the file $BDG_home/bin/helpers.local, which sets the paths to the viewers for each possible CLIENT.

The BUSTER-TNT or SHARP/autoSHARP system administrator should create the file $BDG_home/bin/helpers.local for the set of possible clients. A template ($BDG_home/bin/helpers.local_template) is available. Please make sure that each users ~/.mailcap has the correct entries pointing to the $BDG_home/bin/helpers script. Do NOT edit $BDG_home/bin/helpers directly!


Updating installation

Two ways of updating an installation are possible:

The list of all administrative scripts is available using the $BDG_home/adm/bin/bdg-help command, which also gives a terse description of each script. Usually, each script will report it's usage if command line arguments are expected.


Last modification: 25.10.05