Thursday, May 17. 2007

HTML Page Template Framework

'Glue' web pages on the monitoring server are generated through the Mason Delivery Engine. In other words, Mason is a Perl based template system used for formatting the primary web pages of this server. It requres the use of Apache and mod_perl. Here is what I do to install Mason for my needs. As the monitoring server relies on tables from two databases, OneUnified and NetDisco, the installation process revolves around getting things ready for these two types of databases.

Installation

Install the packages:

apt-get install libhtml-mason-perl
apt-get install speedy-cgi-perl
apt-get install libfcgi-perl
apt-get install libdbi-perl
apt-get install libdbd-pg-perl
apt-get install apache2-dev
apt-get install libapache2-mod-apreq2
apt-get install libapache-dbi-perl
apt-get install libmasonx-request-withapachesession-perl
apt-get install libapache2-request-perl
ln -s /etc/apache2/mods-available/apreq.load /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/apreq.load

Add the following line into '/etc/postgresql/8.1/main/pg_hba.conf':

local   netdisco    netdisco    trust
local 	oneunified  oneunified	trust

Create and load database:

/etc/init.d/postgresql-8.1 restart
su - postgres
psql template1
create user netdisco;
create group netdisco user netdisco;
create database netdisco with owner netdisco;
create user oneunified;
create group oneunified user oneunified;
create database oneunified with owner oneunified;
\q
psql netdisco -U netdisco < netdisco.dump

exit

Add the following lines into /etc/apache2/sites-available/default:


	PerlModule HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler

	<Directory /var/www/liveprobe>
        	PerlSetVar MasonArgsMethod CGI
		PerlSetVar MasonDataDir /var/local/mason
		PerlSetVar MasonDeclineDirs 0
	</Directory>

        # Decline access to mason internals
	<LocationMatch "/liveprobe/.*(\.mc|autohandler|dhandler)$">
		SetHandler perl-script
		PerlInitHandler Apache::Constants::NOT_FOUND
	</LocationMatch>

	<LocationMatch "/liveprobe/.*(\.html)$">
		SetHandler perl-script
		PerlHandler HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
	</LocationMatch>

	Include /usr/local/netdisco/netdisco_apache.conf
	Include /usr/local/netdisco/netdisco_apache_dir.conf

Restart Apache: