e-Tutor PHP Installation
------------------------

Installation of the PHP version of e-Tutor is very simple. It can be
divided into simple steps. Troubleshooting follows the installation
instructions.

Preinstallation
Make certain you have Apache set up properly, and running. Make certain
you have PHP4 installed. Also, MySQL needs to be up and running, with
the root user properly set up. If you would like to allow users to
download file archives (a very neat tool), make certain you have the
program 'zip'.

Step 1 - Unzip
If you're reading this, you've likely done this already. The important
thing is the location. e-Tutor must be in a directory that is accessible
from the outside on a web server with PHP. If your web server's
DocumentRoot is /var/www/html, then a good place to put e-Tutor may be
/var/www/html/et, or similar. If you have unzipped it, you can move the
directory right over. Otherwise, use 'tar -zxvf etphp-version.tar.gz'
and rename the directory to whatever is appropriate.

Step 2 - Check permissions
For e-Tutor to run properly, it must be owned and operated by the Apache
user. Typically you can go into the directory with all the PHP files and
simple type 'chown apache:apache ./', where apache:apache is the Apache
user:group. If you are unsure what the user and group is, see you apache
configuration, it's set in there.

Step 3 - Run the setup
Assuming the example above, the et-php setup script should be accessible
via http://www.yourmachine.com/et/setup.php in a web browser. In the
setup script, simply enter the name of the organization at which the
server is running, a password for the e-Tutor administrator, and the
previously set username and password for MySQL. Remember to choose a
good password for the adminstrator; it should not be easy to guess. Note
that the username for MySQL will generally be 'root', and the password
is not the system's root password, it is MySQL's.

Step 4 - Configure all the options
e-Tutor has been set up successfully. You can log in now. However, the
administrator can set up more options than were listed in the setup.
These can be found under 'Preferences' in the main menu once you log in.
It is important that the options be set to match the standards of the
institution: the course code format, username format, etc.


Troubleshooting Q&A
-------------------

e-Tutor's design is simple; any errors in the install are thus simple to
fix. They are most often caused by a misconfiguration of either Apache,
PHP, or MySQL.

Q: I've entered the correct password for MySQL, but the setup says it
cannot connect to MySQL. What could be wrong?

A: This sounds like a MySQL problem. Make certain MySQL is running. On a
UN*X-type machine, this can be done by "ps ax | grep mysql". If you get
an entry with 'mysqld', then the source of the problem is elsewhere.
Make certain you're using the MySQL root password.

Q: Will et-php run on Windows NT/2000/XP?

A: It has not been tested. However, there are definitely areas that
would not work, especially those relying in the file location /tmp, and
the open source 'zip' program.

Q: When I try to view one of the PHP files in a browser, all I get is
the code! What's wrong?

A: This means Apache is not set up to run PHP. Rather than execute the
code, it is dumping it to the user. Please see the PHP documentation on
how to fix that.

Q: Some of the administrative functions don't work with my browser,
what's up?

A: Some of the administrative pages use small amounts of JavaScript.
They are written to work with browsers put out in the last couple of
years. This is an acceptable burden to place on the administrator,
however, the student side of the interface will work on any browser,
including Lynx.

If you have any questions that you feel are unanswered or should be
covered here, please send an eMail to suwalski@users.sf.net.
