revServer Configuration

[Devin Asay]

On Jul 20, 2010, at 10:58 AM, Gregory Lypny wrote:

> Hello everyone,
> 
> Despite having an On-Rev account, I'd like to get revServer running on a machine at work but I don't understand the configuration instructions I found on rev Lessons.  Under the Overview section, am I supposed to set REVSERVER_HOME to some path?  Where is this variable set and where does it reside?  This is followed by the CGI-When-You-Have-Access-to-Apache section, which I presumably do on my Mac, but it doesn't say how to create a handler to do the mapping that is required.  It also states parenthetically that this is not best practice (but not why), although there doesn't appear to be a section that describes what would be better practice.
> 
> Is there a revServer Configuration for Dummies document out there?

Gregory,

I struggled at first, too. But finally got it to work. Note I am working on OS X Server, so if you are not, the specifics may vary. 

Mike's instructions seem very good; I'll just add my own notes, which I typed up for myself to remind me the next time I have to do this. Hopefully, between Mike and me you'll get it working.

DNA Notes - June 17, 2010
My first test was to enable revServer only for a specific site. At first I had lots of trouble, and I kept messing with the directives for the site to try to fix them. I finally ended up copying Mark's example directives directly into my site config file. The real problem turned out to be the directory issue, described below.

I got this to work after some fiddling. The main problem was I had copied the whole revserver folder into the cgi-bin folder, which meant there was an extra directory intervening and breaking the path resolution. Once I moved the revserver binary and the folders directly into cgi-bin it worked.

June 22, 2010
In order to enable irev scripting for all sites on the server I modified /etc/apache2/httpd.conf as follows:

	AddHandler type-map var
	AddHandler irev-script irev  ## (added line)
	Action irev-script /cgi-bin/revserver/revserver  ## (added line)
	
	AddType application/andrew-inset ez
	
	...
	
<IfModule mod_alias.c>

# (stuff omitted here for brevity)

#### For Mac OS X Server: Uncomment this line to enable web-based 
#### configuration of mailman:
##
#	Include /etc/apache2/httpd_mailman.conf
	<IfModule mod_setenvif.c>
		<IfModule mod_negotiation.c>
# Allow convenient access to Apache manual
			AliasMatch ^/manual(?:/(?:de|en|es|fr|ja|ko|pt-br|ru))?(/.*)?$ "/Library/WebServer/share/httpd/manual$1"
			<Directory "/Library/WebServer/share/httpd/manual">
				Options Indexes
				AllowOverride None
				Order allow,deny
				Allow from all
				<Files *.html>
					SetHandler type-map
				</Files>
				SetEnvIf Request_URI ^/manual/(de|en|es|fr|ja|ko|pt-br|ru)/ prefer-language=$1
				RedirectMatch 301 ^/manual(?:/(de|en|es|fr|ja|ko|pt-br|ru)){2,}(/.*)?$ /manual/$1$2
				LanguagePriority en de es fr ja ko pt-br ru    ForceLanguagePriority Prefer Fallback
			</Directory>
		</IfModule>
	</IfModule>
	#### DNA: Since I keep my web server root at a different location than the default one, I had to comment out existing ScriptAlias, and add the two following
	# ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/
	ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /Volumes/ServerHD2/WebServer/CGI-Executables/
	ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/revserver /Volumes/ServerHD2/WebServer/CGI-Executables/revserver
</IfModule>

# (end quote from httpd.conf)

July 20, 2010
Note: After I ran a system software update from Apple, my revServer stuff stopped working. I discovered that Apple's update modified httpd.conf, uncommenting the first ScriptAlias line. Once I reestablished my ScriptAlias line, and restarted apache, it worked again.

HTH

Regards, 

Devin

Devin Asay
Humanities Technology and Research Support Center
Brigham Young University