A MetaToo application consist of the MetaToo core as well as an application specific supplement and customisation of the core.
Throughout this document, the core may be refered to as "fit" (for historic reasons) or as "the metatoo core".
The target system for the installation must be UNIX. The software packages are particularly well suited for Debian Linux, but should work with other UNIX variants.
Installation on a UNIX system involves the following:
Acquire the MetaToo core software package (http://toolxite.net/metatoo/) as well as the MetaToo supplement packages relevant for the application.
Make sure that the software upon which MetaToo depends are present on the target system. The setup script (see below) will provide you with a list of missing packages upon startup. Also, make sure that a database user with appropriate privileges exist. This database user should either have privileges to create databases or - in the case an already existing database is to be used - have all privileges on that existing database.
Unpack the core package and the application package in the same directory. The core package will have be named fit.ver where ver will usually be a 3 digit version number (e.g. fit.1.4.5). The name of the application directory can be anything. For the purpose of this document, we will refer to it as app/
The rest of the installation takes place from within the app/ directory.
Make any necessary adjustments of the configuration file config.in. The various entries are described in Chapter 2. In most cases, no adjustments are needed.
In the app/ directory, run the setup script setup as superuser (root):
app/# ./setup
This script will start an interactive dialog with the installer and subsequently:
check the target system for existence of necessary Perl modules,
perform the necessary database actions to create the necessary table structure,
install the necessary code on the target system, and
upload to the database the content of various definitions (formats, forms, etc) located in the source package(s) in various files.
The setup dialog will ask for the following:
The dialog will start by asking for a service name -
vname - for the installation. Default value is
the value for configuration parameter PACKAGE.
Informations regarding the database used for the installation.
The mail address to which MetaToo system mails are sent. Should be the application manager or the system administrator.
The passwords for the two special users associated with any MetaToo installation.
After these informations are fed to the setup script, it will establish the MetaToo database.
Application specific - as well as core - definitions are then loaded into the database.
Finally, various codefiles are copied to their location beneath the cgi-bin directory of the target system. During the copy, the files are renamed, introducing the chosen service name as prefix.
An application may be installed more than once on the target system, for example, for test purpose.
Making a second installation of an application is done by making a new installation of the MetaToo supplement packages relevant for the application into directory app2/ which should reside as sibling to app/, and then repeat step 4 and 5 of the install procedure described above. Make sure to:
choose a service name at the begining of the dialog which is different from the service name chosen for the initial installation, and
choose database parameters for a database different from the one used for the first installation.
As with a first-time installation, it is important that the database user is allowed to create databases (or that the database is readily created at setup time).