[ HyperCal ]

Installing HyperCal

File permissions
Restricting who can reserve rooms
What to do if it still does not work

The following is the installation procedure for HyperCal. HyperCal is a web-based application, not a module, and so there is no nice make and install script, like much of the other Perl software that is available on the net.

Some of the instructions below are for NT. You will find that the Apache web server to NT makes most, if not all, of these problems go away. I would strongly recommend installing that before you proceed any further.

Also, before you start, you will need to acquire the Time:: modules that I use. They are available from CPAN in the /modules/by-module/Time directory. The file that you want is Time-modules-CURRENTVERSION CPAN can be found at www.perl.com/CPAN. If you are running the ActiveState 5.005+ build of Perl, run the Perl Package Manager (ppm.pl) and type "install Time-modules".

Extract the tar.gz file into your CGI directory. It will create a "hypercal" subdirectory. If you are using NT, and you don't know what a tar.gz file is, please get WinZip before you write and tell me that the install file does not work.

chmod +x all the .cgi files. You can rename them to .pl if that strikes your fancy. I have them the way they are due to the way cgi-wrap is setup on my test server. On NT, it is likely that you will want to change them to .pl, rather than trying to wrestle with making NT work. Some battles are just too big.

On NT, if you are running IIS or some similarly brain-damaged HTTP server, you might want to move HyperCal.pm to the lib directory whererver you have Perl installed. Probably c:\perl\lib The Perl scripts will be unable to find it otherwise. Just so the blame is in the right place, this is IIS's fault for not passing ENV variables correctly, not Perl-Win32's fault.

Edit HyperCal.pm, setting the variables to values that are correct for your local system. All variables should be self-explanatory. The color stuff is a little cryptic, but you should be able to figure it out.

Access the scripts via http://servername/cgi-directory/hypercal/index.cgi

File permissions

People frequently have trouble with file permissions, so here's what you have to do. Remember that this is a database application, of sorts, so the scripts have to have write access to the "database" files. Those files are the files in the datafiles directory. Since on most servers the CGI processes run with no permissions, this means that you have to allow everyone to write to those files. On a Unix system, this means chmod a+w filename, and on NT, this means "Everyone, full control". If this concerns you a lot, you might want to move those files outside of the web root directory, so that nobody can retrieve those files with a browser. Just modify the location of the files in HyperCal.pm by putting a full path in the variable name. For example:
#  Data files
my $datadir = "/securedirectory/datafiles";
$Config->{datebook}="$datadir/datebook";
$Config->{announce}="$datadir/announce";
or, on Windows, 
#  Data files
my $datadir = "c:/secure/datafiles";
$Config->{datebook}="$datadir/datebook";
$Config->{announce}="$datadir/announce";

Restricting who can add events

 One of the more frequently requested features in past versions was the ability to restrict who can add events to the calendar. In this version, I have split the "user" and "admin" functionality into seperate files. This means, on web servers that support such a concept, that you can password protect the events.cgi file and/or the announcements.cgi file, so that only those persons with permission to do so can add, edit, and remove events and/or reservations. You will need to consult the documentation on your particular web server to see how to do this. A large variety of servers support this behavior, including the big three - Apache, IIS, and Netscape servers. If in doubt, just install Apache.

What to do if it still does not work:

[ HyperCal ]