CD-Rom Problems
Read the instructions which are on the CD.
The first thing to say is that this sort of application is not really that
for which web browsers were designed. Operation of this search facility
should be regarded as rather experimental, though we have successfully
run this software on a wide variety of UNIX machines (Solaris, Tru64, IRIX,
Linux (Redhat & SuSE)).
System requirements
A UNIX/Linux operating system
write permission on /tmp
perl at a location in the user's $PATH. (versions 5.002 or later have been
tested, though earlier versions probably work.)
netscape web browser (Only netscape has been tested, other web browsers
could be tried, however this would require you to copy the scripts which
run the code to you local disk and edit them).
The environment variable $PWD to be set to the current working directory
(should be the default on most/all UNIX/Linux systems).
Known potential problems
You may only run one instance of 2QZ.sh per machine. This is because log
files are written to /tmp and multiple versions of 2QZ.sh would attempt
to overwrite each other's search results. Secondly, if there
is already a version of the perl CGI servlet running on your machine
the port number 8008 (the default port) will already be in use. You
could possibly get around this restriction by editting the
scripts to change the file names and port numbers, but it is a bit complicated
and we do not provide detailed instructions.
Netscape gives the error:
The two most probable causes are that the perl HTTP server is not running
or proxy misconfiguration.
-
When you run the ./2QZ.sh script, the command shell prompt should not immediately
return. One possible cause of this happening is that you already have a
netscape running. Close the existing netscape and try again.
-
If the command prompt has not returned, Netscape may be attempting to connect
to the search script via an internet proxy. Obviously there is no point
in doing this, since it would then be connecting to itself via another
server. This is likely to happen if your computer operates behind an internet
firewall or is using a webcache. We have so far only found this to cause
a problem on Linux installations.
To fix, you simply need to tell Netscape not to use the proxy when
talking to itself. In the proxy configuration dialogue window, add 127.0.0.1
to the "No Proxy for" list, separated by a single space from any other
addresses already entered. In most versions of Netscape, this is found
by following the menus: Edit -> Preference -> Advanced -> Proxies -> View
Manual configuration -> No Proxies for. (For Netscape 3 and earlier, it
is menu Options -> Network Preferences -> Proxies.)
If you are using `Automatic configuration' mode, we can only suggest
you contact the configuration providers and request that 127.0.0.1 (otherwise
known as `localhost') be added to the list of addresses to not use proxy
or you install the searcher to your local hard disk.
If in the proxy configuration window, you have `Direct connection to
the internet' selected, this was not the cause of your problem.
Only plain text is presented to the screen starting with
<HEAD><HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR=#FFFFFF>
This problem is know to occur on very recent versions of Mozilla or Netscape (version > 7.0).
It is caused by a MIME type having been set wrong in one of the scripts on the CD. Most
browsers will ignore this mistake and work fine, but a couple have been seen to be
very strict. Depending on your broswer, you may be able to edit the MIME type settings
to force MIME "text/plain" to be rendered as HTML, but this is unlikely.
If netscape starts, but either loads no page or your usual home page instead of
the 2QZ data, try simply typing iin the following URL:
http://127.0.0.1:8008/mnt/cdrom/html/index.html
This is assuming your CD is mounted at /mnt/cdrom. If now, change the path in the
URL accordingly.
The following is drawn directly from the documentation for the perl HTTP
server which we are using (CGIservlet-1.2.pl). We have not observed this
problem on any systems we have tested.
An odd server side network error is reported by Netscape when a Post
is initiated from a Javascript Submit of a <FORM>. This was found on
Red Hat 6.1 Linux with perl 5.00503, 5.00503 and 5.6.0. But not on IRIX
or Red Hat 5.0.
Installing to Hard Disc
If none of the above helps, it is most likely that you are not going to
get the search engine running directly from the CD-Rom. You could try installing
onto the hard disk, but it is unclear that this is likely to solve any
real problems. Running from the hard disc should also result in modestly
better performance.
Method 1:
If you have sufficient disc space, you could copy the entire CD to a directory
on your hard disc and run from there. e.g.,
cp -r /path/to/cdrom/* /path/to/new/location/on/harddisc
As long as you continue to invoke ./2QZ.sh from the directory in which
it resides, everything should work as on the CD.
Method 2:
If you wish to retain the data on the CD, or run the 2QZ.sh script from
anywhere other than its default location, you need to specify some path
names in the scripts. This is considered an option for `expert users' only,
but it should be straightforward for anyone familar with the UNIX enviromment.
The paths that are likely to need editing are:
in 2QZ.sh
location of CGIservlet-1.2.pl. This may be absolute or relative with respect
to the location of 2QZ.sh. (Currently ./html/CGIservlet-1.2.pl)
location of index.html. This must be an absolute, not relative path. (Currently
$PWD/html/index.html)
If you wish, you could change /tmp/2qz.log in order to personalise its
location.
If you wish, you could also change /tmp/2QZ.log and /tmp/2QZ.out.html both
here and in cat_search_www2.pl in order to personalise their locations.
in html/searcher.cgi
The location of cat_search_www2.pl must be given relative to the path whence
CGIservlet-1.2.pl was run. (Currently html/cat_search_www2.pl, since it
is in the directory html/ on the CD.)
in cat_search_www2.pl
If you wish, you could also change /tmp/2QZ.out and /tmp/2QZ.out.html both
here and in 2QZ.sh in order to personalise their locations. These two paths
are specified by the OUT and HTML_OUT filehandles. Each files location
is also hard-coded in at once. Sorry about that!
The location of all the data needs to be specified either absolutely or
relative to the location of cat_search_www2.pl. These variables appear
in cat_search_www2.pl as fitsname, gifname, psname, fitsnameb, gifnameb,
psnameb and dssname.
Set location of full catalogue relative to location of 2QZ.sh. (Currently
set by the line $catfile="cat/2QZ_10k.txt"; )