Chebucto Suite (CSuite) Release 1.0-beta-1

Status

This is a Beta release, so don't expect perfection or a lot of documentation although it is definitely significantly better in both respects than alpha releases. The installation and most functionality has been tested on Linux (2.0 kernel) and the functionality has been in production for a long time with a lot of users on Chebucto Community Net.

This version does not necessarily install on SunOS or Solaris. For those platforms please wait for a later beta or release.

Acknowledgment

The terms of distribution of CSuite have always required "prominent acknowledgment" but at some sites using CSuite we have not always found this to be the case, so we are firming up the requirement.

Unless an exception is made in writing, any site running this version or later of CSuite in whole or in part will be required to have an Acknowledgments page linked from the Home page (the first HTML page a registered user sees). On this Acknowledgments page, the following text must be included, with the CSuite acknowledgment the first link on the page unless a link thanking volunteers is first in which case the CSuite acknowledgment may be second.

The following text is installed when you install CSuite, with your organization's full name and abbreviated name substituted for @@@FULL_NAME@@@ and @@@SHORT_NAME@@@ respectively:

@@@FULL_NAME@@@ is pleased to acknowledge

Primary Software
@@@FULL_NAME@@@ uses the Chebucto Suite (CSuite) Software developed by Chebucto Community Net in Halifax, N.S.

Software Prerequisites

If you are running a Debian Linux distribution, read the file DEBIAN for a list of packages you should have installed before you attempt to install CSuite.

If you are running GNU make, make sure it is version 3.75 or later -- earlier versions have a bug which prevents compilation of lq-text, the search engine.

Please help us complete this section before release of version 1.0.

CSuite Documentation

CSuite documentation is changing rapidly. The distribution includes bookmarks to local CSuite documentation located in:

CS_ROOT/info/csuite/docs

the document CS_ROOT/info/csuite/docs/index.html includes links back to the most current documentation at Chebucto Community Net.

The distribution includes CSuite Documentation located in the following directories: 

info/adm/admin-helpdocs			*Admin/Office Procedure w/examples
info/Help				*User Documentation
info/Services/IPsupport			*Information Provider Support
info/Services/Training			*Training Documents
info/Services/Training/Materials	*Training Materials
info/Services/Archives			Access to Mailing List Archives
info/Services/MailList			Request Form, etc..
info/Services/Member			Membership Benefits
info/Services/PDA			A pointer back to Chebucto's 
					  Public Download Area
info/Services/Registration		*The Account Registration Forms
info/Service/UserAccount		---under construction---
info/Services/Volunteers		Volunteer Documents

info/Policy				Policy related documentation
info/Policy/MailList			*Mailing Lists *Draft*
info/Policy/Email			---under construction---

Files Needed

README
this file
COPYRIGHT
terms of distribution
csbuild
installation script
build.tar.gz
lots of files required for install
vars
global variable file
src*.gz
all the other parts of CSuite

Install

  1. Retrieve all the above files (about 20MB) into a directory of your choosing.
  2. Select a destination directory (e.g. /var/csuite) with about 160MB or more free.
  3. Run "sh csbuild".
  4. csbuild will build lynx and then the rest of the install will take place from that interface. You can quit whenever you like and restart later where you left off. Be careful -- lynx starts up background processes, so make sure that one step finishes before you start another.

Hints

There are five mailing lists available for CSuite support.
csuite-install
questions related to the CSuite install process
csuite-setup
questions related to getting up to speed running CSuite
csuite-dev
report your results here
csuite-announce
announcements concerning new CSuite releases.
csuite-tech
high-volume list for day-to-day development

Read the documents that are installed under CS_ROOT (your installation directory) starting at info/csuite/docs/index.html . These give an overview of administering a CSuite system. These and other documentation sources will grow and mature in Release 1.0.

GOOD LUCK!

Known Problems

The following problems are known to exist in the distribution and should be fixed shortly following this release.

Short-term Plans

Following are just a few things that will be done before release 1.0:

Robots.txt

A robots.txt file is included in the distribution. This file provides some measure of control over what parts of your site will be indexed by visiting WEB spiders and robots.

We acknowledge that you may want to amend or remove this file from your site -- we have included this file because it is our wish to have the most current CSuite documents indexed and we would prefer to allow indexing of CSuite documents at chebucto.ns.ca.

The distributed version of robots.txt does not attempt to exclude the Help/ tree which may include documents which you have developed.

Changes

  • changes since Beta-1.0 will be found at The CSuite Changes Page.

    alpha5.0 -> 1.0-beta-1:

    alpha4.2 -> alpha5.0:

    alpha4.1 -> alpha4.2:

    alpha4 -> alpha4.1: