Installation Procedure

Note that this guide does not describe how to install a webserver or PHP or a database server. See the documentation for these programs on how to install those. This installation guide assumes that you already have a working webserver with PHP support and a MySQL database installed.

Important: this is the installation instruction for Achievo versions 1.0.RC1 and higher. The setup.php script mentioned did not yet exist in older versions. Older versions all contain a doc/ directory though inside the tar.gz file, which contains an INSTALL file describing how to get Achievo installed without a setup.php script.

 1. Unpacking

After you've downloaded Achievo, untar the entire achievo archive to a place where you can access it with your webserver.

example:

$ cd /usr/local/apache/htdocs # change to a web accessible directory
$ tar xzvf ~user/achievo_x.x.tar.gz # unpack the tar.gz file

optional:

$ ln -s achievo_x.x achievo # make a symbolic link

 2. Create the database

Create an empty database in mysql and a user that has create, alter,
select, insert, update and delete-access on the database.

example (assuming your mysql root password is 'secret'):

$ mysql -u root --password=secret mysql

mysql> create database achievo_1_0;
mysql> grant create,alter,select,insert,update,delete on achievo_1_0.*
to achievo@localhost identified by 'secret';
mysql> quit;

This creates a database named 'achievo_1_0', and a user with username
'achievo' and password 'secret'.

Note: the create and alter privileges are only needed during installation and upgrades. You can revoke these privileges once the installation is complete.

Note 2: if you are using MySQL 4, you must also grant the 'lock tables' privilege to the user.

 3. Configure Achievo's database connection

Edit the file config.inc.php in the achievo directory, and set the
$config_databasehost, $config_databasename, $config_databaseuser and
$config_databasepassword, $config_database variables to match your setup.

example:

$config_databasehost = "localhost";
$config_databasename = "achievo_1_0";
$config_databaseuser = "achievo";
$config_databasepassword = "secret";
$config_database = "mysql";

 4. Configure administrator login

In the same configuration file there is a variable $config_administratorpassword. This is the password you need on your first login. You might want to change this password.

There are some other things in the config-file that you can change, but
for your first configuration, you can leave those settings to the default.

 5. The Achievo database setup script

After editing the configuration file, point your browser to the setup.php script in the Achievo directory. For example:

http://yourserver/achievo/setup.php

You'll be prompted to login. Enter 'administrator' as username and the password you've set in step 4.

Follow the instructions. Achievo will first perform some system checks, to see if your PHP configuration is up to date. If it discovers any problems, it will tell you how to solve them. If everything is ok, it will install the database for you.

 6. Finished!

Once the setup.php script is completed, you'll be ready to run Achievo.
You can point your browser to the Achievo directory, like this:

http://yourserver/achievo/

If this is the first time you're using Achievo, you might want to take the Guided Tour, which will show you everything you should do to make Achievo useable for your users.

 7. Cron script setup

Achievo contains some useful cron scripts that can be run periodically from a cron job. See the cron/README file in the Achievo distribution for available cron features and instructions.

 User contributed notes

Important: The user contributed notes are intended for adding comments to the manual that might be useful for other users.

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