Installation
The Open
Source way of confirming QSOs
Installing most Open Source packages can be frustrating, confusing and
off-putting. For a change, this site hopes to answer all of your
installation and use questions. For the novice and even those that have
done this before, all the details of installation can be quite complex
and involve many different levels of knowledge. So, let's get started!
Working with your Web Site - Introduction Note: try to use the
version of software given, that can help in troubleshooting problems.
Many DXpeditions will be using a CMS these days. Some of these tools won't be needed.
Sometimes it's just plain easier to work on pieces of web pages using a
WYSIWYG tool, here are some free ones:
Nvu.
Simple to use. Tables are a bit difficult to handle.
[[an error occurred while processing this directive],
[an error occurred while processing this directive]]
Komposer. Derived
from Nvu, with many bug fixes.
[[an error occurred while processing this directive],
[an error occurred while processing this directive]]
Trellian
WebPage [[an error occurred while processing this directive],
[an error occurred while processing this directive]]
FTP (upload/download) tools.
There are zillions of these, you may already have your own favourite.
Whatever you do, you'll need an FTP client to upload the code to your
server. You'll also need the hostname/username/password combination for
your FTP server. Try to use SFTP. FileZilla uses PuTTY to
include SFTP protocol support.
FileZilla
(not a Mozilla product). Easy to use.
[[an error occurred while processing this directive],
[an error occurred while processing this directive]]
SFTP & SSH.
Transferring your code securely is important.
PuTTY. Easy
to use.
[[an error occurred while processing this directive],
[an error occurred while processing this directive]]
Other tools for
changes and conversion to PDF files. If you need to add a PDF,Oo or Lo
can be one of the best ways to do it.
OpenOffice. [[an error occurred while processing this directive],
[an error occurred while processing this directive]]
LibreOffice. [[an error occurred while processing this directive],
[an error occurred while processing this directive]]
Text editors
with programming language specific syntax checking
TextPad. Very useful
text editting tool for code patching.
[[an error occurred while processing this directive],
[an error occurred while processing this directive]]
NotePad++. Very
useful text editting tool for code patching.
[[an error occurred while processing this directive],
[an error occurred while processing this directive]]
We should next check your PHP
installation:
Copy the following code and create an info.php
file. Copy the info.php file to your web
server
and open it up with a browser. Remember that it is a .php
file and not a .html or .htm file.
<?php
// Show PHP settings on your web server
phpinfo();
?>
|
If the above PHP program works, you can see
that your web
server has PHP installed. You should be able to see just about
everything you ever wanted to know about your server, including some
critical passwords, etc. Either put this in a VERY secure place on your
server OR remove it immediately so that nobody else can see it!
Making
a secure area on your server:
We need to make a secure area because you will be loading logs up to
the server. You don't want anybody else to be able to mess with your
logs. If you want a manager to be able to do it for you, you can define
multiple users with different (or the same) passwords. To be clear,
there is a difference between "a htaccess file", "a htpasswd file" and
a .htaccess file, don't get confused.
The typical UNIX server (inc. HP-UX, Solaris, Linux, freeBSD, OpenBSD)
directory structure is as follows:
/usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/ .
On VPS (Virtual Private Servers) this is
frequently: /home/username/usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/
and can be referenced by using ~/usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/
In ~/usr/local/etc/httpd/conf you'll find the configuration area for
Apache, including httpd.conf
and mime.types
~/usr/local/etc/httpd/ is a very good place to position your htpasswd
file, because
it should never be reachable by a web user in the outside world.
If
domain resolution fails, most servers will point to
~/usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/ where a welcome.htm(l), index.htm(l),
welcome.php or index.php file will be served up to the outside world.
Clearly, it could be accessible by any user "out there" and is NOT the
place to put your htpasswd file.
Your domain should sit under ~/usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/ , so if it were for J38ZZ, you might use ~/usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/j38zz
In that directory, you will have all of your web site content and a
welcome.htm or index.htm page as the home page. At the same level, you
should have a .htaccess file with content similar to example.htaccess which will keep out robots and crawlers. Place the file there and rename it so that it's just .htaccess.
Creating your htpasswd file:
Log in to your server using a terminal window. Make sure you are root ("superuser"). On Linux you may need to use sudo.
Check where you are by using pwd. Use cd to get to
~/usr/local/etc/httpd/ . Use ls -asl to check that the contents look correct.
If you don't already have an htpasswd file present, create one, using: htpasswd -c osQSL <username>. You will then be prompted for a password. Make it memorable, because you won't be able to read it, even as root.
To change or add a username and password into the file use: htpasswd osQSL <username>, then enter the password at the prompt. Your passwd file is now at: to
~/usr/local/etc/httpd/osQSL. Doing more osQSL
on that file should show one username per line, followed by the
encrypted password which was generated by the UNIX crypt command (or
MD5, but we won't go into that detail here). Note: Don't confuse htpasswd with passwd (or vpasswd).
Securing your upload directory:
AuthName "osQSL Login"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /usr/local/etc/httpd/osQSL
require valid-user
Options +Includes
AddHandler server-parsed .htm .html
Options +ExecCGI
AddHandler cgi-script cgi pl
|
Let's go back to your main web directory (which we called ~/usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/j38zz) by using cd. Create a sub-directory called osQSL (~/usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/j38zz/osQSL) by using mkdir
or by using your FTP client (which can be used for everything from here
on in). Create a sub-diectory under that called manager (~/usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/j38zz/osQSL/manager)
Copy the above file and save it as .htaccess. Place it in your ~/usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/j38zz/osQSL/manager directory.
if you go to that page using your browser (http://yourdomain.org/osQSL/manager), you'll be prompted with osQSL Login
and asked for your username and password. Note: if you tell your
browser to remember the username and password that's at your risk.
If you change the AuthName phrase in your .htaccess file, your browser will ask you again if you want to remember the settings.
If you have logged into your osQSL directory and then go there again in the same browser session
you won't be prompted for your usename and password again. If this
worries you, close your browser, re-open it and prove that you have to
login again.
Your secure area is now set up!
If you have doubts about htaccess and how it works, or want to know
more try these links:
.htaccess
tricks and Apache
.htaccess reference
osqsl_footer
osQSL is a release under GPLv3.
This Page Last
Updated: 2017-01-14 08:33:26Z
menu
footer
Some examples not to follow! ©
1979-2025 VP9KF. All rights
reserved.
IP footer
User Agent:
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com) IP Address:
216.73.216.19
