Slashcode

04/03/24/0234217 story

Making Slash Install Friendly?

posted by Cliff on 10:50 PM March 23rd, 2004      

Recently I was asked by a heavily trafficed website to investigate migrating their site to Slash. After downloading the latest codebase I'm reliving a lot of the installation frustrations experienced when I messed around with Slash over a year ago. I've installed lots of portals before like PhpBB, Nuke, MX-System etc. All of those installs were pain free. I'm writing to request that you guys simply the install process. How about some straight forward docs? I would suggest a list of required packages and then simple instructions how to get Slash working with Apache etc that comes with most distros.

Cliff adds: It's always a good thing when your software is fairly easy to install, but the problem with Slash is that it requires quite a few libraries and Perl modules to do its thing. Slash tries to simplify things as much as possible with CPAN bundles and the INSTALL file, but there's only so much the developers can do. Many times Apache+mod_perl will need to be compiled, and compiled properly, and this is where many Slash installs have problems -- the developers can't compile these things for you, so you end up having to do them, yourself.

Having said this, what ideas and suggestions do you have for the Slash developers? What things can they do now to simplify Slash installs. What things can they work on in the future to smooth over the pains installing Slash that you are experiencing, today?

• Debian packages! (Score:1)

  by Baloo Ursidae (4770)

  Three words: slash-cvs debian pacakge
  • Re:Debian packages! (Score:1)

    by NachO (2977)

    So your saying you can just "apt-get install slash" and it will work?
    • Re:Debian packages! (Score:1)

      by Baloo Ursidae (4770)

      Yeah, it does, mostly, right out of the box.
• One thing that would simplify (Score:2)

  by tf23 (175)

  Get the distro's/vendors to
  
  a) include the more recent perl, and httpd
  b) get them to compile it properly, just as slash needs
  c) comments in the INSTALL doc on how to get Slash to properly work with OSX 10.3, and comments on whether or not one should strip perl/httpd1.3 off OSX and install from src or... etc etc.
  d) get the distro's to include all/more-of the perl modules that Slash needs.
  
  While I don't agree with some of what the article's submitter says (installing's *not* that hard on Linux, IMHO, and it's

  --
  lottadot [lottadot.com]
• Questions about system requirements (Score:1)

  by philipdl71 (5859)

  This webpage [slashcode.com] suggests nothing less than a Pentium-II/200 and 256mb of ram in order to run Slashdot. It also talks about Slashdot as it existed in 2001. Is this documentation just for Slash 2.2.6? I only ask because the system requirements of the CVS tag [sourceforge.net] I am running haven't changed at all.

  I am running Slash CVS tag R_2_3_0_113 on an Athlon 750mhz machine with 256MB of ram. Merely visiting a webpage where index.pl gets called shoots up the CPU to 70 or 80% and page loads seem slow. Getting new hardwar

  • Re:Questions about system requirements (Score:1)

    by ChristTrekker (1204)

    I've asked that question several times, and that's about the same answer I've been getting. The main limiting factor seems to be RAM. I'm thinking of putting Apache and MySQL on separate (small) boxes, just because that's what I've got sitting around. Maybe that will help.

    --
    ⇒ Constitutionally Correct [cpne.org] ⇐
• The Gentoo Linux build system (Score:1)

  by lee (6376)

  I have been using Gentoo Linux for over 6 months now and have it installed on 6 computers ranging from Athlon XP workhorse to Apple G3 laptop. It's package menagement system is called Portage and I believe it can solve all the Slash installation problems in one swoop, seriously. Like the BSDs all software is compiled from source. It has this concept it called USE flags. These are compile time options which is exactly what slash needs to be properly configured. These options can tell Portage to download a s
  • Re:The Gentoo Linux build system (Score:1)

    by lee (6376)

    Not checking the defaults I slipped and hit the submit button. There should be line breaks in there but I can't find a way to edit posts.

    -lee
    • Re:The Gentoo Linux build system (Score:2)

      by tf23 (175)

      You can't go back and edit comments that have already been posted. That functionality's not in the stock code.
      
        tf23

      --
      lottadot [lottadot.com]
• Install Slash For Dummies (Score:1)

  by misterorange (3825)

  www.installslash.org :)
  • Re:Install Slash For Dummies (Score:1)

    by zugok (6410)

    I find it somewhat amusing that after the toruble of explaing how to install Slash, the forum is php based.
• A response to the question, and then my own Q. (Score:1)

  by Cyde (5552)

  As to how to make slash easier to install, I can think of one thing that would definitely work - although it might be considered overkill. Distribute the proper versions of Apache, Slash, MySQL, and Perl altogether in a source distrobution - and a single "./configure; make; make install" it will all work. Granted, the downloads will be a lot bigger than just downloading Slash, but at least it would just work.
  
  As for my question ... I'm running my own slashcode site and I'm having problems with my RSS feed
  • Re:A response to the question, and then my own Q. (Score:1)

    by Cyde (5552)

    Haha, nevermind my question - in the time that I posted that comment it appears as if my RSS feed has been automatically updated! I supposed the intended behavior is that the RSS is only generated upon demand and then cached indefinitely ... the last time I viewed the RSS feed was nearly a month ago, and so it finally got around to updating the feed today when I started accessing it again.
• slash.iso ? (Score:1)

  by snyd3282 (6413)

  Time is money. Low end servers are cheap. How about a bootable cd that installs a minimum linux installation with everything needed for slash and does the initial configuration? I'd pay $100 if I could pop a CD into a spare box, fill out a couple screens of information, and have a slash server 60 minutes later.