* WebEvent

WebEvent: Installation Guide

So you want to give WebEvent a spin? The following information should provide useful in getting the software installed and configured on your local system.

Table of Contents

This document was last modified on: Thu Mar 20 02:52:58 1997

WebEvent 2.04 - webevent@MatadorDesign.com
Copyright © 1997, Matador Design. All Rights Reserved.

Introduction to WebEvent

WebEvent is a World Wide Web calendar program which allows users to access event (calendar) information in a familiar format. Users can access the information from any computer which is connected to the World Wide Web.

With the ability to display the information in either text or table formats, WebEvent is useful to everyone. With WebEvent, you no longer need to know HTML in order to create a calendar of events. Simply choose the date you want to modify, enter a title and description, and a new event will be added to the calendar. You might also want to note that it is possible, if you so desire, to include html in both the title and description.

At this time, documentation for using WebEvent is sketchy at best. However, we feel the interface is easy to use. If you feel otherwise, please send us your comments

A Quick Overview of how WebEvent works

WebEvent is a collection of CGI and PERL programs working together to display information kept in a local (flat) database. You can choose either TABLE or LIST views to display the actual information. WebEvent uses a "group" analogy for organizing information. Each user or "group" has their own WebEvent database and it is possible to have an unlimited amount of groups on a local server. For example, each faculty member in a department can have their own calendar and there can also be a departmental calendar which displays information relevant to the entire dept.

Installing WebEvent on your local server

WebEvent was tested and configured on machines running SunOS 4.1.3 with Perl 4.0, NCSA http 1.3 and CC/GCC. We have HTTP running as nobody for security reasons. If your environment is different, than you may need to make modifications to the source code to get it to run both securely and at all.

Follow these steps to install the WebEvent on your local server:

  1. Make sure you have the necessary software installed on your system:
    1. NCSA httpd version NCSA/1.3 or later
      • CGI must be enabled
      • Follow links must be enabled
    2. PERL 4 or later
    3. A version of C supporting K&R coding.
  2. Download WebEvent
  3. uncompress -c WebEvent.tar.Z | tar xvf -
  4. Configure the software for installation by editing and the running the config.sh script. config.sh will create two scripts called install.sh and uninstall.sh that will be used to install/uninstall the WebEvent software.
    1. Edit the file config.sh. Change UNIX shell variable definitions to reflect how you would like the software installed.
    2. Move the various tar files that accompanied config.sh to the location defined as TarDir in config.sh (normally /tmp)
    3. Executed the config.sh script. This will create the install.sh and uninstall.sh scripts. If you are working from a temporary directory, you will want to copy these files to a more permanent location.
    4. You should now run the install.sh This will install the WebEvent system on your local server.
      NOTE: Before running the install.sh script you should take whatever steps necessary to ensure that the httpd process will have read/write access to each of these files. The recommended method is by using the 'su' program to become the httpd user and then running the install.sh script.
    5. When the install.sh script exits normally, WebEvent has been installed on your server.
  5. After the WebEvent program has been installed, there will be two scripts in it's main directory called adduser.sh and deluser.sh. They are very simple scripts that you can use to add and remove calendar groups to the system. Controlling access to the calendar sets is HTTP server dependent.. Contact your server administrator for help.
  6. In the case that you would like to uninstall WebEvent, use the uninstall.sh script. If you have problems or suggestions regarding this script, please contact us.
Please Note: Before you actually use the WebEvent program, you will need to link two files from the package into a directory that your server will execute scripts from (/cgi-bin on most NCSA server). For example, if you install all the program files in the directory /usr/local/etc/httpd/WebEvent then you will need to do the following: 
             % cd /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin
             % ln -s /usr/local/etc/httpd/WebEvent/WebEvent .
             % ln -s /usr/local/etc/httpd/WebEvent/calendar.defaults .
After doing this, you should be able to access the URL 
             http://localhost/cgi-bin/WebEvent

Security Issues and Implementation

WebEvent has primarily two perl CGI scripts: WebEvent and update.pl. By controlling access to these files, you control what people can or can not do with individual calendar sets. How to control access to these files is is HTTP server dependent. For samples configurations using the NCSA HTTPD User and Host Authentication, please see our samples page.

We do suggest that you have the HTTP server running as "nobody" since there are system calls imbedded in this program. Plus, this will limit any other security holes in HTTP which may be discovered in the future. All WebEvent files should be owned by "nobody". Users should not be allowed to edit their configuration files unless they are *very* familiar with HTML and PERL; otherwise, strange things can happen.