The Model Engine News DVD Collection

1. The "Selfextracting 7-ZIP archive" (23 MB download here)
2. The Perl 1.4.14 "ZIP archive" (34MB download here)

The two "download" links above require that you select a "mirror" site from the list. Pick one that is geographically close to you and click on the link at the right hand side to start the download. It's best to save them to disk. This saves you the trouble of doing it again if something goes wrong and you need to re-install.

When you have downloaded them, execute the first one (the "Self-extracting Zip") by double-clicking on it. This will popup a window asking you where you want to extract to. Important: you must extract to a drive identifier, not a directory. I recommend that you don't choose C: unless it's the only hard drive you have. The reason being that even in these days of gigantic disks, so many things install to C: without giving you an option that it tends to fill up all too quickly. So things that can go somewhere else, should!

When the extract is complete—and it will take a while to uncompress everything—you will have a new top-level directory called xampp on the disk you chose. If this directory is not a top-level directory, the dynamic stuff won't work (without tinkering).

Now double-click the Perl zip file. This will open WinZip. Select "Extract" from the button bar. In the popup, make sure that "all" is selected (it should be), and highlight the xampp directory as the destination. Click OK to start the extract. You should then get a popup asking if you want to replace some zero-length file with another larger one. Click the Yes to All button and wait for the extract to complete.

The Win32 XAMPP Apache setup is very well behaved. It does not make registry entries and can be completely removed, leaving no detritus behind, simply by deleting the xampp directory. The price for this is it must be setup initially, and started through a DOS shell session. But you can do this by double-clicking batch files if you don't like command prompt shells. I suggest using a shell. Start one by clicking Start|Run... and entering cmd in the entry field.

When the DOS window opens, change disks to the one with the XAMPP installation. Say it is on the "E" drive; you enter E: and press Enter. Now change directories to the XAMPP directory by entering cd xampp. The prompt should echo E:\xampp> indicating that you are where you need to be. Enter setup_xampp (press Enter, naturally). You'll get a banner and a prompt to "Press any key to continue . . .". Unless your keyboard actually has an Any key (joke), press Enter. Now enter apache_start. After a little while, bi-lingual text will appear telling you that Apache (your web server) is running and reminding you not to close the DOS window as that will kill the server. You can minimise the window to get it out of the way though.

This picture (from a Win32 install) shows the contents of the /xampp/cgi-bin directory after the files have been copied in. While the actual file sizes and date stamps may vary, these should be close to what you receive on the DVD. The other file names in the directory are part of the "standard" XAMPP and Perl distributions. They do no harm and could be safely deleted—along with a *lot* of other unnecessary material, but I'm trying to keep things simple here!

Testing

Oh dear... There are just *so* many things that can go wrong. If you can't even get the Model Engine News Welcome page up, check that the Apache server is alive and well. Just enter localhost into the browser. It should display the XAMPP Logo Page. If you are still getting a Page cannot be displayed message, the server is not running. You should double check the installation steps and consult the various XAMPP forum groups for clues.

Assuming you can get the XAMPP logo page, but not the MEN Welcome page, it most likely means that the copy of the men directory from the DVD into /xampp/htdocs did not take place correctly. Use a file browser to confirm that men is inside the htdocs directory and that it contains the same set of files and directories as appear on the DVD. In particular, the index.html file that is the default entry point.

If you can get the Welcome page, but the Engine Finder does not work, it's time to consult the log. Use your file browser to locate the file /xampp/apache/logs/access.log and open it up in a text editor. The last line of the file will have the result of trying to execute the Perl script that performs the Site Search. The three digit number at the end is the HTTP result code. It should be "200". If not, lots of things can be wrong. One possibility is that the Perl command is not being found. Linux, Solaris, and maybe MacOS-X users (!) can type whence perl into their command line shell to find where the Perl executable is located. This exact path should be compared against the first line of the following files in the cgi-bin directory:

• find.pl
• engsel.pl

The first line (often called the "Hash-Bang" line because it starts with "#!") is a comment that tells the well behaved shells and web servers where to find the program that must be used to execute the script itself (naturally, Microsoft products ignore this industry-wide convention). If it is different from what your 'whence' returned, edit the entry to match the location (the line must commence with #! immediately followed by the path to the Perl program. The -w argument after the path is optional, and a good idea as it may give extra warning when other things are wrong.

If you still have no joy, I'm happy to try to guess what may be wrong, but I can make no guarantees. Email me through support@modelenginenews.org. I'm not monitoring this address 24 hours a day, so the response may not be immediate, but I will get back to you. Of course, you can also try consulting your neghborhood 9 year old computer wiz, if you can stand it, or use Google to search for the error message you are getting (that's what I'll be doing if it's not one I know). Even managing to change the error message is a positive step. Perseverance and diligence will generally get you there in the end.