The VAXbb Homepage
VAXBB version 0.95 / John G. Drummond / omar@allwrong.com
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README for VAXBB version 0.95
See CHANGELOG for revision history.
See FILES for a list of the files you should receive with this
package.
See LICENSE to read the GNU PUBLIC LICENSE, under which all files
in this package are released, excpet for Stephen Brenner's
cgi-lib.pl (http://cgi-lib.stanford.edu/cgi-lib/). cgi-lib.pl
is copyright (c) 1993-1998, Stephen Brenner. Everything else
is copyright (c) 1999-2002, John G. Drummond.
This program makes no claim to be fit for any purpose whatsoever.
Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
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QUICKSTART:
1: -Place vaxbb directory somewhere under cgi-bin.
2: -chown and chgroup everything to whatever user and
group your webserver runs under. I sure hope it
isn't root.
3: -Edit your webserver config file to use HTTP Basic
Authentication for the vaxbb directory. The
README.AUTH file may be of some help.
4: -Edit the bbconfig file to reflect your setup.
5: -Run "./addbbuser --initial" as root (or the webserver
owner) in the vaxbb directory to create the administrator
account.
6: -Make 1 or more categories, either when addbbuser --initial
asks you to, or use the handy addbbcat script.
7: -Make an html link that points to
or, just point your browser there.
8: See if it works!
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NOTE: All the perl links at the top of the files point to
/usr/bin/perl. If your perl binary is in /usr/local/bin/perl you
can either change them all, or put a link to perl in your /usr/bin
directory like this (while root):
assuming your perl binary is in /usr/local/bin:
ln -s /usr/local/bin/perl /usr/bin/perl
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NOT SO QUICK START for PEOPLE WHO READ README FILES:
This package should gunzip/untar into a directory called vaxbb. This
directory should go somewhere under the cgi-bin directory for your
web server. At this point, I have only tested the code under Apache,
so if you get it running under some other server, let me know. Heck,
If you get it running period, I'd love to know. (omar@allwrong.com)
The file bbconfig has all the variables that you should need to edit
to get things running.
You also MUST set up the directory you place the files in to be
password protected via HTTP Basic Authentication with appropriate
settings in your webserver config (httpd.conf under Apache). Please
see the file README.AUTH. The ./addbbuser --initial command can
attempt to create an apache-style .htaccess file for you (see below).
Once you have the bbconfig edited appropriately, it's time to add
the first user and the first category in your bb. You do this with
the
./addbbuser --initial
command while in the directory you have chosen as the home for
vaxbb. It will step you through the initial setup. You will
more than likely need to be LOGGED IN AS ROOT when you do this.
For this reason, you should probably at least skim the addbbuser
code before you run it -- not because I don't trust my code, but
because you should be in the habit of examining arbitrary new
code before running it as root, if you're not already. Not
that I'm not embarrassed for people to look at my code, either. :)
If for some reason you need to run addbbuser with the --initial
switch again (and you really want to start over with a clean slate),
you should probably delete your bbpasswd file, all the user
directories under users/, clear out all the entries in users/user_db,
delete all the categories from the categories file, and delete
everything in the posts/ directory.
That's it! You can add users with the addbbuser script, and add new
categories with the addbbcat script.
One thing I have not done is automated the culling/expiration of
articles. Maybe that'll be the signal that vaxbb has made it to
version 1! (Well, that, and threaded articles.)
Enjoy, and mail in those bug reports. Let me know what you like and
what you don't. Contributors are ultra super uber-welcome. I'm
really not the world's greatest programmer (as you can probably tell
from my code). ;)-~
Cheers, good luck, and enjoy!
-John Garnett "Omar" Drummond
omar@allwrong.com
http://www.omar.org/opensource/vaxbb/
http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/vaxbb/
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