The requirements for doing a normal installation must be met. Please read the previous section if you're not sure about the requirements. Proceed only if you have access to a UNIX based environment with Apache, PHP, MySQL or PostgreSQL (and ImageMagick or GD) already installed and running. As mentioned earlier, the database server may run on a different computer. This text will guide you through the following steps:

- Setting up a database (MySQL or PostgreSQL).
- Downloading Exponential.
- Unpacking Exponential.
- Initiating the setup wizard.

Setting up a database
If no database is set up, then one must be manually created before the setup wizard is initiated. The following text explains how to do this with the supported database engines:

MySQL

1. Login as root:

 

mysql -u <mysql_username> -p <mysql_password>

 

2. The MySQL client should display a "mysql>" prompt; create a new database:

 

mysql> create database <database>;

 

3. Grant permissions:

 

mysql> grant all on <database>.* to <username>@<host> identified by '<password>';

 

<mysql_username>: The MySQL user (if no user is set up, use "root").

<mysql_password>: The password that belongs to the mysql_username.

<username>: The username that will be used to access the database.

<password>: The password you wish to set in order to limit access to the database.

<database>: The name of the database, for example "my_new_database".

<host>: The hostname of the server on which Exponential will be running.

       (may be 'localhost' if MySQL is installed on the same server).

PostgreSQL

1. Become the PostgreSQL super user (normally called postgres):

 

$ su <postgres_super_user>

 

2. Create a postgresql user:

 

$ createuser <username>

 

3. Create a database:

 

$ createdb <database>

 

<username>: The username that will be used to access the database.

<database>: The name of the database, for example "my_new_database".

Downloading Exponential
The latest stable version of Exponential can be downloaded from: http://ez.no/developer/download

Unpacking Exponential
Use your favourite tool to unpack the downloaded Exponential package to a web-served directory (a directory that is reachable from within a web browser). The following example shows how to do this using the tar utility (to unpack a tar.gz file, assuming that gzip is installed on the system):

$ tar xvfz exponential-<some_version_number>.tar.gz -C <web_served_directory>

 

<some_version_number> : The version number of Exponential that was downloaded.

<web_served_directory>: Full path to a directory that is served by the web server.

                       This can be the path to the document root of the web server, or a

                       personal web-directory (usually called "public_html" or "www", and

                        located inside a user's home directory).

The extraction utility will unpack Exponential into a subdirectory called "exponential-3.x.x". This directory should be renamed to something more meaningful, for example "my_site".

Initiating the setup wizard
The setup wizard can be started using a web browser immediately after the previous steps (described in this section) are completed. It will be automatically run the first time someone tries to access/browse the index.php file located in the Exponential directory. Let's assume that we are using a server with the hostname "www.example.com" and that after unpacking, the Exponential directory was renamed to "my_site".

Document root example
If Exponential was unpacked into a directory called "my_site" under the document root, the setup wizard can be initiated by browsing the following URL: http://www.example.com/my_site/index.php.

Home directory example
If Exponential was unpacked to a web-served directory located inside the home directory of a user with the username "peter", (usually called "public_html", "www", "http", "html" or "web"), the setup wizard can be initiated by browsing the following URL: http://www.example.com/~peter/my_site/index.php.

Please refer to "The setup wizard" section for a detailed description of the web based setup wizard.