Bhavesh responded to my seemingly irrational exuberance about OpenACS asking, “What’s the excitement about OpenACS?”

There are much better answers to this question, starting with Why OpenACS?, by my web host Cathy Sarisky, but here’s my super brief answer.

OpenACS is a toolkit to build online communities, that is, sites which value users and their contributions. OpenACS provides applications which allow users to create and manage content - applications like forums, photo albums, blogs, calendars, wikis, and file storage areas. Users can obviously create content in these areas, but they can also be given extra privileges to moderate the content or grant privileges to others. So, administrators can delegate the management of the site to those who are most invested in it - the community. Currently, OpenACS’s main focus has been at educational institutions (MIT, the University of Heidelberg, and many others) where it’s ideally suited for course management. It’s currently not polished enough to be used out-of-the-box unless you’re comfortable with Linux system adminstration, but improvements are being made in that area.

This site is built on OpenACS, but I barely scratch the surface of the features available. I plan to add more stuff soon, but OpenACS is in the midst of releasing its next version, so I’m concentrating my extensive free time in that endeavor. Once OpenACS 5 is out, I’ll upgrade this site and then add some of the bells and whistles.

To be honest, I’m not sure that OpenACS is the right application if you’re just looking to build a personal website. Movable Type is much more suited to that purpose. OpenACS is useful when you want to allow a bunch of users to each have complete control over their own personal websites, yet also allow those users to interact with each other, perhaps even aggregating content from multiple users in one place. So, if you wanted to create a service that competed with TypePad, you could use OpenACS to do that.

OpenACS’s main power lies in the fine-grained control that it gives you. Every object and area can be controlled the way you want, so the level of control that users have is up to you. The database API is clean and gives you full access to the database of your choice - Oracle or PostgreSQL. Your hands aren’t tied. The templating system is intuitive yet offers a lot of features for more complex, specific cases if needed. A lot of work is currently going into building and improving an automated testing framework. There are plenty of other reasons why I love OpenACS and I’ll write about them some more as examples of them come up.

In short, OpenACS is the way for me to get things done on the web.

Hey, my colleague Steve Vaughan is quoted in this NY Times article on music file sharing and he even got mentioned by name on scripting.com.

The Worst Jobs in Science via badgertronics

The next time an intern complains to me about their job, I’m gonna say, “Yeah, you’re right, but read this!” :-)

Forget MTV. I want my OpenACS! So, I finally got around to install OpenACS on my Powerbook. Mostly, I just followed MarkD’s excellent directions, but I used tDom and AOLserver 4, so there were a few differences.

Another Mac OS X OpenACS Installation Guide

by Vinod Kurup

I installed OpenACS 5.0 on my PowerBook G4. Everyone should read MarkD’s guide since it’s more comprehensive and explains a lot of the changes that I don’t explain. I used some different software versions which made my experience different enough to document.

This is a quick and dirty document for people who have installed OpenACS 4. If I haven’t been clear enough or if I’ve made mistakes, please let me know.

Apparently, these instructions may also help you install OpenACS on FreeBSD

• look at Andrei’s instructions if you’re doing that.

Software Versions

All of the AOLserver modules were obtained from CVS (2003-09-14).

• Postgresql 7.3.4
• AOLserver 4.0b14
  • nscache CVS
  • nsrewrite CVS
  • nssha1 CVS
  • nspostgres CVS
  • tDom 0.78
• OpenACS CVS

Install Postgresql

1. ./configure - fails on readline not being installed

2. Install readline:

    $ fink install readline
   

3. Configure

    $ ./configure --with-includes=/sw/include --with-libs=/sw/lib
   

4. Compile

    $ make
    $ sudo make install
   

5. Create the database directory and give yourself permission over it.

    $ sudo mkdir /usr/local/pgsql/data
    $ sudo chown vinod.staff /usr/local/pgsql/data
   

6. change $PATH. Add /usr/local/pgsql/bin to the PATH variable in your ~/.profile

7. I tried doing an initdb next and it worked, but then I got the following error when starting PG.

    FATAL:  invalid value for option 'LC_TIME': 'en_US'
   

8. I found Tom Lane’s answer:

    $ /usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data --no-locale
   

9. Start it.

    $ pg_ctl -D /usr/local/pgsql/data -l /usr/local/pgsql/server.log start
    $ createlang plpgsql template1
    $ createdb openacs
    $ createuser openacs
    (Answer 'Y' twice)
   

Install AOLserver

I’m going to use AOLserver 4. Previous versions of AOLserver came bundled with a customized version of TCL, but AOLserver 4 can use the standard TCL releases, as long as TCL was built with thread support. Mac OS X 10.2 comes with TCL 8.3.x, but without thread support. Fink currently has TCL 8.4.1, but also without thread support. So, the right solution is to download TCL and build it manually. But I had already downloaded Fink’s version, so I just manually edited the .info file that specifies how to build TCL and added --enable-threads. Of course, when the next version of TCL gets uploaded to the Fink repository, I’ll be screwed, but I’m too lazy to compile TCL again right now.

1. Configure and Compile AOLserver

    /usr/local/src/aolserver/aolserver$ ./configure --with-tcl=/sw/lib
    /usr/local/src/aolserver/aolserver$ sudo make install
   

2. Install nscache and nsrewrite

    /usr/local/src/aolserver/nscache$ sudo make install
    /usr/local/src/aolserver/nsrewrite$ sudo make install
   

3. nssha1 doesn’t compile without editing nssha1.c. Comment out the following 2 lines (lines 139-140):

    // typedef unsigned int u_int32_t;
    // typedef unsigned char u_int8_t;
   

4. Compile nssha1

    /usr/local/src/aolserver/nssha1$ sudo make install
   

5. nspostgres doesn’t link outta the box. Add -lnsdb to the MODLIBS var in the Makefile:

    MODLIBS   = -L$(PGLIB) -lpq <b>-lnsdb</b>
   

6. Compile nspostgres

    /usr/local/src/aolserver/nspostgres$ sudo make install POSTGRES=/usr/local/pgsql ACS=1 
   

Install tDom 0.78

1. Edit /usr/local/src/tDOM-0.7.8/unix/CONFIG

2. Uncomment the instructions meant for AOLserver 4, but edit it to look like this:

    ../configure --enable-threads --disable-tdomalloc \
      --prefix=/usr/local/aolserver --with-tcl=/sw/lib
   

3. OpenACS 5 will notice that you’re using AOLserver 4 and will automatically call ‘package require tdom’. You shouldn’t have to do anything special to get tDOM working with OpenACS 5.

Get ready to start

1. Get OpenACS CVS.

2. Edit config.tcl (a.k.a. nsd.tcl).

   1. Change server to openacs.

   2. Set serverroot to wherever you put your OpenACS CVS

   3. The config.tcl file that comes with OpenACS 5 will properly load nsdb.so (and ignore libtdom.so) if you’re using AOLserver 4.

   4. Change the stacksize to 2048000. If the number you choose is not divisible by 4096, then you get:

        \[15/Sep/2003:19:08:02\]\[1997.2684358124\]\[-main-\] Notice: PostgreSQL loaded.
        nsthreads: pthread_attr_setstacksize failed in NsCreateThread: Invalid argument
        Abort trap
      

3. Set some permissions:

    chmod 755 /usr/local/aolserver/log
   

4. Start it!

    $ /usr/local/aolserver/bin/nsd -ft /web/openacs/etc/config.tcl
   

Changelog

• 2004-01-23 - Pointed to Andrei’s FreeBSD document. Simplified instructions which are automatically taken care of by OpenACS 5
• 2004-01-05 - Added fixes from Jeff Davis.
• 2003-09-14 - Initial Revision

Open Letter to SCO.

Loud Applause

I can barely believe it myself, but I ran 20 miles this morning in Central Park. The New York Road Runners Club organized a long run for people training for fall marathons. The longest I had run before was about 17 miles for my Chicago Marathon training, but I remember that “run” being mostly walking in the second half.

Today went much better. I started with the 10:30 pace group and stayed with them. We ran 4 loops around Central Park - the 6 mile loop, the 5 mile upper loop, the 5 mile lower loop and then the 4 mile middle loop. The first 3 loops went smoothly, but I started to die around mile 17 or so. I was able to keep my pace around 10:40 for the last 4 miles, but it seemed much slower. Of course, doing anything more strenuous than thinking is painful right now, but it’s a good pain.

The pic to the right is from the Run to Liberty 10K that I ran last week. I ran it as a training run and finished in 1:00:46.

Legal Music Downloads and some great background information. I’m gonna give iRATE a try.

Read this journal of a guy who had his sight restored after 43 years of blindness. via Badgertronics

I got home as it was getting dark, so I ran at the gym, on the treadmill. I usually hate running indoors, but running on the treadmill has one huge positive point. You don’t have to pay attention where you’re going. I got myself into a groove and before I knew it, I was done with my 5 miles in about 47 minutes. Much faster than I was just a few months ago!