M2Web Installation

The following page initially copied from:

 http://vista.vmth.ucdavis.edu/home/index/48.html
 on 10/12/06

Comments by K. Toppenberg will be marked with #//kt

M2Web setup update 2006-05-19 by Jim Self

The setup of M2Web on Debian with OpenVistA is pretty simple now if OpenVistA and Apache2 are already installed. I assume that OpenVista files are owned by user vista and installed in directory /usr/local/vista/OpenVistA/ and that M2Web files will be owned by user m2web and installed in /usr/local/m2web/. For a private or a demonstration server, M2Web files could as well be installed in the same place and with the same owner as for OpenVistA.

1. download and expand the latest m2web*.tgz file into directory "/usr/local/m2web".

     # mkdir /usr/local/m2web 
     # cd /usr/local/m2web
     # wget http://vista.vmth.ucdavis.edu/files/m2web_20060519_pre.tgz
     # tar xvfz m2web_20060519.tgz

2. load MUMPS data for m2web globals (htCGI, htGo, htNote, htPref, html, view)

     # cd /usr/local/m2web/w
     # $gtm_dist/mupip load -format=binary m2web_20041220.gtmbinary

3. If you did not place m2web files in "/usr/local/m2web/" then replace that in m2web-vista-cgi and m2web-vista-site with the location you chose. If you did not place OpenVistA files in "/usr/local/vista/" then change that as well. Also, If you want the CGI to run as a different user than vista or to respond to a different server name, replace that in m2web-vista-site.

4. edit and then copy file m2web-vista-cgi to /var/www/vista/m2web.cgi and set permissions to make it executable

     # vim m2web-vista-cgi
     # mkdir /var/www/vista
     # cp m2web-vista-cgi /var/www/vista/m2web.cgi
     # chown -R vista.vista /var/www/vista
     # chmod 700 /var/www/vista/m2web.cgi

5. edit and copy file m2web-vista-site to /etc/apache2/sites-available/vista

     # vim m2web-vista-site
     # cp m2web-vista-site /etc/apache2/sites-available/vista

6. Enable the vista virtual server in Apache and the suexec module so it can run as user vista.

     # cd /etc/apache2/
     # ln -s sites-available/vista sites-enabled/
     # ln -s mods-available/suexec.load mods-enabled/

7. Test the apache configuration for errors.

     # apache2 -S

8. Restart the apache web server to enable the new configuration.

     # apache2ctl graceful

9. Append vista as an alternate name for 127.0.0.1 in /etc/hosts (for local testing). If your server name is testpc, the configuration line would look something like this:

     127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost testpc vista

     If you don't have access to a dns server and you want to make the server available to other local computers, you must make an entry for vista.net in the corresponding file on each client computer. If your server is at 192.168.1.128 then the entry on each client would look something like this:

     192.168.1.128 testpc vista.net

At this point you should now be able to access the VistA database.

For a first test, point your browser (mozilla preferred) on the same computer at http://vista/echo

For a second test, point your browser at http://vista/go

This will present a login screen if you are not already logged in.

If you log in as a programmer (a user with fileman access code = "@"), it will give you a web based MUMPS programmer shell, starting at the top of the page with a text entry field where you can enter MUMPS commands and define new "go" commands.

Next try http://vista/notebook or http://vista/guestbook