[Chameleon] Preinstall questions, for Unix and PHP 5

[Paul Spencer]

Hi Gregor,

the most common problem with setting up Chameleon is actually in getting 
all the required packages installed first.

You will need:

apache
php configured as a CGI
mapserver
php/mapscript
proj

and possibly others like postgis, geos etc if you use those.

If you are reasonably certain that these things are all installed 
correctly, you should be able to install very quickly:

1) extract tar ball

2) modify your httpd configuration to create the necessary aliases

/chameleon/samples -> chameleon/samples/htdocs
/chameleon/admin -> chameleon/admin/htdocs
/chameleon -> chameleon/htdocs

for instance, you could use the following:

Alias /chameleon/admin "/opt/chameleon/admin/htdocs"
<Directory "/opt/chameleon/admin/htdocs/">
   AllowOverride None
   Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Multiviews
   Order allow,deny
   Allow from all
</Directory>

Alias /chameleon/samples "/opt/chameleon/samples/htdocs"
<Directory "/opt/chameleon/samples/htdocs">
   AllowOverride None
   Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Multiviews
   Order allow,deny
   Allow from all
</Directory>

Alias /chameleon "/opt/chameleon/htdocs"
<Directory "/opt/chameleon/htdocs">
   AllowOverride None
   Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Multiviews
   Order allow,deny
   Allow from all
</Directory>

there are several others you can set up, but these will do the trick.

3) edit chameleon/config/chameleon.xml to make sure that the paths are 
correct.  Important settings are:

web_server_path ... this will be the first part of the third alias that 
you set up (/chameleon in this case)

mapscript_module ... this is the file name that you php_mapscript module 
has.  Do not include any path, just the name (including extension).

button_cache_path ... file system path to where buttons should be created

button_cache_web_path ... web path to same location.

(note I usually create /tmp/ms_tmp and symlink it to /var/www/htdocs so 
that /ms_tmp is a web-accessible location, then put the buttons inside 
this directory /tmp/ms_tmp/buttons with a web path of /ms_tmp/buttons)

tmp_img_path ... file system path to a web accessible temp directory for 
temporary images created by mapserver (/tmp/ms_tmp in the above example)

tmp_web_path ... web path to same location (/ms_tmp in above example)

maturity_level ... by default is BETA you may need to change to ALPHA or 
UNKNOWN if some widgets don't work in the more advanced samples.

At this point, you should be able to load the sample applications via

http://localhost/chameleon/samples

if they don't appear, check your aliases and restart apache.  If they 
appear but are broken some how, contact the list with symptoms.

I've written this from memory without consulting the installation docs. 
  If this works for you then I'll try to update the docs with whatever 
is missing.

Cheers

Paul

Gregor Mosheh wrote:
> Hi, all. Two questions...
> 
> A month or so ago, I tried to install Chameleon (both
> 2.0.1 and the 2.2 beta) and failed completely. Several
> others I know have complained of similar results, and
> we're all of the opinion that the install docs are
> missing a few things. So I was hoping to save a lot of
> time by asking whether anyone has a procedure for
> installing Chameleon on Unix. If so, could you post it
> to the list, or send it to me, or (best) update the
> install docs?
> 
> I hate to not be able to give specifics as to my
> problems, but my hope is that someone wrote down how
> they did it, and would save me the headache of
> re-experiencing them. ;)
> 
> The second point:
> 
> There was a mention, though I can't track it down at
> the moment, that Chameleon required a somewhat old
> version of PHP and would not work with newer versions.
> I'm running PHP 4.3.11 and I won't downgrade for
> various reasons. Is that old PHP still a requirement,
> or will 4.3.11 still work? Is anyone using Chameleon
> with PHP 5?
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Gregor Mosheh
> System Administrator and Head Programmer
> HostGIS, GIS Hosting Solutions for the Global Community
> http://www.hostgis.com/
> 
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-- 
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|Paul Spencer                           pspencer at dmsolutions.ca   |
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|Applications & Software Development                              |
|DM Solutions Group Inc                 http://www.dmsolutions.ca/|
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