Setting up Mambo on Fedora Core 6

Brief Backgrounder on Fedora Core:

Fedora Core is a Linux Distro for basic servers pretty much how its commercial father(Red Hat) is (although it could{It is!} be a really great desktop OS too) . It is sponsored by Red Hat and is run by a "Board of Directors" composed of folks from the community and Red Hat itself called Fedora Project Board. Its one of the multi-disc'd linux distros where you'll find a full-pack of open source programs for various applications, and is pretty sleek and secure. More about it here

Now on Mambo:

Mambo like Fedora Core is provided as an open source software. It is a Content Management System (CMS) which in brief - lets you set up a basic site in minutes. It is a PHP/MySQL CMS. Key features are great WYSIWYG editor letting you in-line edit content, Articles are saved using yet another open source database (MySQL), and general lay-out that is governed by templates and is easily customizable plus lots more for you to find out. There are also add-ons you could plug it in with to expand functionality. It could be used as a catalogue, portal, virtual department store etc., at our company, we're even using as a access-based knowledgebase.. the possibility is limitless.

Fedora Core 6 and Mambo 4.6:

..got a Server OS and a CMS? combine them and you'll have your own site running and it will be a matter of getting a name for your IP, or if not, a development environment. This article will discuss only in brief, but if you as a reader wants a detailed explanation on something all you have to do is to post a comment.

Preparing Fedora Core 6 run Mamb0 4.6.1

All the required software to run Mambo 4.6.1 is bundled already with Fedora Core 6, so probably if you decided to install a Full Fedora Core 6 package, you don't have to worry about installing these using the Packager Manager or Yum. Basically if you have PHP, MySQL, and Apache on the server, then all you have to do is configure these. Let me outline a list of all required packages to get Fedora Core 6 operate PHP5, MySQL5 and Apache2 properly:

• MySQL
• httpd
• libdbi-dbd-mysql
• mod_pearl
• mysql-connector-odbc
• mysql-server
• perl-DBD-MySQL
• php
• php-mysql
• php-pecl-apc
• unixODBC
• libdbi
• libdbi-drivers
• mx
• perl-BSD-Resource
• perl-DBI
• php-cli
• php-common
• php-pdo

Its not that many actually, basically its just to set up an Apache, MySQL, PHP and Pearl for Mambo under Fedora. You wont even have to download these one by one as listed. All you have to do is use Download Manager and check the key applications to install and Fedora will figure out the dependencies for you.

Supposing you installed Fedora Core using a standard set up. Invoke the Package Manager (from GNOME desktop) by clicking Applications -> Add/Remove Software. Install the following the applications and their optional packages if they are not checked:

• Servers
• MySQL Database
• php-mysql
  
• Web Servers
• mod_perl
• php_mysql
• php
• php_pecl_apc

The 1st level list is the Application Category, the 2nd level is the Application itself, while the third are the Optional Packages. Upon selecting an application by checking the corresponding checkbox, there are a number of optional packages that are already checked by default, you could leave them as is but you have to make additional optional packages available as outlined above. Make sure these Optional packages are installed as well together with the default ones upon application selection. Hit apply and let Package Manager figure out the dependencies for you. A few prompts and you'll get a confirmation when its done. It might take a while though.

Once through, invoke the terminal by clicking Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal. Start the MySQL and Apache Services using the following commands on the Terminal:
Start MySQL Daemon
service mysqld start
Start Apache HTTPD Server
service httpd start

You can now download the latest Mambo Stable version from here. Depending on the format of the Mambo installer, you have to uncompress it on the "/var/www/html" folder which is the directory where Apache publishes files also termed as DocumentRoot. For ex. if you unzipped a folder named Mambo-4.6.1 under the /var/www/html directory, its live address would be http://example.com/Mambo-4.6.1. Otherwise, if you uncompressed the Mambo files directly to /var/www/html folder with no other folders, the live address would be http://example.com/ or http://localhost for local viewing.

NOTE: The default configuration of Apache 2 for Fedora Core 6 is to run the HTTPD instance under the user Apache. This means you will have to chown and chgrp the folder and files under the "var/www/html" to user apache using the following command:
Change user to Apache
chown -R apache /var/www/html
Change group to Apache
chgrp -R apache /var/www/html

This is of course after you have uncompressed the Mambo files under the directory above. Also, all files needs to be owned by user apache so the HTTPD server can serve them as content.

Open your browser and point it to http://localhost and you should see the Mambo installation page. For further details on installation click here. We try our best to periodically add and update content so bear with us or join to help.. ;)