openflax-2003.0927 README
-------------------------

OpenFlax is an experimental open-source web server written in Erlang.

For more information about OpenFlax, see the doc/ subdirectory.

Installation
------------

Unpack the archive so that the openflax-<<version>> directory is in your
Erlang lib directory.

To recompile the binaries, if necessary: from the command prompt, in the
openflax-<<version>> directory, type

  erlc -o ebin/openflax src/openflax/*.erl
  erlc -o ebin/openflax/http src/openflax/http/*.erl

Creating a Configuration File
-----------------------------

In order to run OpenFlax, you must first create a configuration file
that tells it how to behave.

Make a copy of the file doc/conf/sample.conf and modify it to reflect your
desired configuration.

You can also use the openflax.tool.installer module from the openflax_mod
application to walk you through creating your configuration file.

Manually Starting and Stopping
------------------------------

To start OpenFlax, type the following from the shell or command prompt:

  erl -run openflax.app start /where/you/put/your.conf

To stop the web server, type 'q().' (without quotes), then press Enter.

Starting at Boot Time
---------------------

You may start the web server on a FreeBSD system every time it boots up
by following these steps:

- Create a user named www and give them a shell that can understand the
'-c' option (e.g. /bin/sh).

- Copy the file script/openflax into the /usr/local/bin directory.
You may also want to edit it to change the mnesia database directory.
(This directory should be owned by the user www and should not be
publicly readable.)

- Copy the file script/openflax.sh into the /usr/local/etc/rc.d
directory.  Note that stopping OpenFlax with openflax.sh requires that
'killall' is installed on your system, and will stop all instances of
the Erlang/OTP runtime ('beam') running as www - so you should probably
run only one.

After following these steps, the result will be that, upon boot,
'openflax.sh start' will be executed, which will su to the www user and
start the script /usr/local/bin/openflax.

All of the supplied scripts are written for FreeBSD 4.8 but they should
be fairly generally applicable to Unix-like systems.