Chapter 4. Installation

Table of Contents

Quickstart guide
Upgrading from an older version
0.9.9
0.9.8
0.9.7
Things to know before you start
Which database server?
Where do the components go?
The mystery of the configuration files
Environment variables
Some notes on the filesystem
Installation on Linux and other Unix variants
Generic instructions
OS-specific hints
Installation on Windows NT/2000/XP
Prerequisites
Installation from the sources
Installation of prebuilt binaries
Installation on Windows 95/98/ME
Other operating systems
Finishing the RefDB installation
Using the interactive setup script
Manual setup
Testing your installation
SRU support
Setting up SRU support as a CGI program
Setting up SRU support using a standalone web server
Install the PHP interface
Prerequisites
Web server configuration
Test your PHP interface

This chapter tries to explain the process of the installation. There are some things you should consider before you actually install the software. These will be discussed in the second section. The technical details of the installation on various platforms can be found in the following sections of this chapter. The final sections deal with the setup of optional web-based frontends. But first we start with a brief overview of installing and running RefDB for those who never read manuals.

Quickstart guide

These are the essential steps to get your reference database up and running:

  1. Follow the installation instructions for either Unix/Linux or Windows.

  2. Finish the installation by creating and filling the internal database.

  3. Start the application server refdbd, either manually or as a daemon, as explained in the OS-specific installation sections.

  4. Create one or more reference databases.

  5. Add one or more users that are permitted to work with this database (not required if you use the SQLite database engine as it lacks access control).

  6. Add bibliography styles.

Some of the above steps are simplified by the shell script refdb-init which you should have a thorough look at. Then it is up to the users to populate the database with references, run their queries, create bibliographies, and whatever they may desire.