mtinstall - Movable Type Installation/Upgrading
This document describes the process of installing the Movable Type system on your machine, or upgrading to a newer version of Movable Type.
Movable Type requires the following:
There is a good chance that the two required Perl modules are already installed on your webserver, so you will not need to install them yourself. Don't worry about this now; instructions for determining whether you have these modules installed is below, in Checking for Required Modules. You will need to perform the first set of steps (Installing the Movable Type application) first.
If you have already installed the previous version of Movable Type (1.0), you do not need to perform a complete installation. Instead, follow these steps:
Make sure that you upload all of the files in ASCII mode, except for any images, which should be uploaded in binary.
NOTE: if you have made changes to any of the files that you are replacing, you will need to mark the files that have changed, and make the same changes to the new versions. This only applies if the changes you made have not been incorporated into the new Movable Type release in some form, of course. If you are unsure whether you need to redo a change you have made to one of the Movable Type files, ask your question on the Support Forum (http://www.movabletype.org/support/ib3/ikonboard.cgi).
755
.
This means that the owner should have read, write, and execute permissions, and that group and other should have read and execute permissions (but not write permissions).
-w
at the end of
the first line in each file; this setting turns on warnings in Perl, and it is
important that it be left on.
To determine the location of Perl on your webserver, take a look at the support pages for your hosting service. Alternatively, if you have a shell (command line) account, and are familiar using it, you can log in to that account that type:
$ whereis perl
This will give you the location(s)
of Perl on your system.
Create a new directory for the Movable Types files, if necessary; then open that directory.
CGIPath
to point to the correct URL where you are planning to install
Movable Type (corresponding to the location you chose in Step 4). For example,
if you are installing Movable Type so that it will be located at
http://www.your-site.com/movabletype/, you would change the CGIPath
line to
CGIPath http://www.your-site.com/movabletype/
After changing that line, save the file and exit the editor.
ASCII mode: docs, lib, mt.cfg, styles.css, tmpl, and all of the CGI scripts (mt.cgi, etc.).
Binary mode: images.
Set the permissions (CHMOD) of the files mt.cgi, mt-comments.cgi,
mt-add-notify.cgi, mt-check.cgi, mt-load.cgi, and mt-import.cgi
to 755. If your FTP client sets permissions using a graphical display, make
sure that all users in the list have Execute
and Read
permissions. Only
the Owner
should have Write
permissions. NOTE: if you are using the Unix
shell to set permissions, see Setting Permissions on Unix (below).
Read
, Write
, and
Execute
permissions.
NOTE: it is advisable from a security standpoint to create the db directory outside of your web-accessible directories. This prevents web browsers from seeing any of your database content.
If your hosted account has a non-web-accessible directory, it is more secure to place your db directory outside of the web-accessible area. For example, many hosted accounts have a home directory that is not web-accessible, then a a public_html directory that is the root of your web-accessible area. Movable Type supports placing your db directory in a non-web-accessible area.
To do this, do not create your db directory in the same directory in which you installed Movable Type; instead, create the db directory somewhere outside of the web-accessible area, and set the permissions to 777, as instructed above. You will then need to edit the mt.cfg file to provide the path to the new db area. Change the line
DataSource ./db
to instead read
DataSource /FULL/PATH/TO/DB
where /NEW/PATH/TO/DB is replaced by the full filesystem path to the db directory you just created. For example, if you create the directory at /home/melody/db, the above line would read
DataSource /home/melody/db
Then save and re-upload the mt.cfg file.
mt-load.cgi is a Perl script that loads initialization data into the Movable Type databases: an initial author, a blog, and some starter templates. If you get a 500 Internal Server Error when running this script, first check that you set the permissions to 755 (see above for what this means), and that you uploaded the file in ASCII mode. If these suggestions don't help, refer to the Troubleshooting section of the manual.
If successful, mt-load.cgi will report its success. If unsuccessful, it will report the error that occurred. This error could be due to insufficient permissions on the db directory, or the non-existence of that directory. See Step 6 (above) to determine whether you set the permissions correctly.
VERY IMPORTANT SECURITY NOTE:
Afer running mt-load.cgi, you should remove mt-load.cgi from the directory where you installed Movable Type. Failure to remove mt-load.cgi could enable someone else to create a blog in your Movable Type installation, and possibly gain access to your data. FAILURE TO DELETE mt-load.cgi INTRODUCES A MAJOR SECURITY RISK. So you should delete it now.
As mentioned above, it is very possible that your server already has the two required Perl modules, HTML::Template and Image::Size. To determine whether these modules are installed on your server--and to install them, if they are not already installed--follow the steps below. If you know that these modules are installed, you can skip to Setting up your Blog Directories.
mt-check.cgi is a Perl script that checks whether HTML::Template and Image::Size are installed on your server. If you get a 500 Internal Server Error when running this script, first check that you set the permissions to 755 (see above for what this means), and that you uploaded the file in ASCII mode. If these suggestions don't help, refer to the Troubleshooting section of the manual.
If the script runs successfully, it will say ``Checking for HTML::Template...'' and so on. If the script reports that your server has both HTML::Template and Image::Size installed, you can skip to Setting up your Blog Directories. Otherwise, continue with step 2.
http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/HTML/HTML-Template-2.4.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/CPAN/modules/by-module/HTML/HTML-Template-2.4.tar.gz
http://www.movabletype.org/downloads/Image/Size.pm
$ gunzip HTML-Template-2.4.tar.gz $ tar -xvf HTML-Template-2.4.tar
If you are on a Macintosh, Stuffit Expander will unpack these archives. If you are on Windows, EasyZip or winzip will do the job.
In the extlib directory (see Step 4), create a new directory called HTML; open that directory; upload the file Template.pm from the HTML-Template archive into the new HTML directory. In other words, after uploading, Template.pm should be located at extlib/HTML/Template.pm.
Ignore the rest of the files in the archive.
In the extlib directory (see Step 4), create a new directory called Image; open that directory; upload the file Size.pm that you downloaded above into the new Image directory. In other words, after uploading, Size.pm should be located at extlib/Image/Size.pm.
The following steps will need to be repeated every time you create a new blog/journal in Movable Type. These steps set up the necessary permissions on your blog directories to allow Movable Type to access them.
You should see the Movable Type login prompt. If you do not, check your permissions, and check that you uploaded the CGI scripts using ASCII mode. If neither of these helps, take a look at the Troubleshooting section of the manual.
Melody
and the password Nelson
.
Edit your profile
, then change the author name and password
there.
First
Blog
already exists in the system; this blog will help to give you a head
start in setting up your first blog in Movable Type. First Blog
comes with
some pre-made templates; of course you can edit these templates, or delete
them, or do whatever you like with them. But they are a good starting point,
and will give you a sense of familiarity with the Movable Type template tags
and structure.
To configure the blog for your own purposes, click on the link to First
Blog
under Your existing blogs
, then click on the link to Edit Blog
Configuration
. Change the name of the blog to whatever you wish to call
your blog, and enter a description.
Then, fill in the path and URL information (Local Site Path
, Site URL
,
Local Archive Path
, and Archive URL
). Values for Local Site Path
and
Site URL
are provided by default, to give you a sense of what the paths
should look like; when setting the values of Local Site Path
and Local
Archive Path
, it is best to use absolute paths (paths beginning with a /
),
rather than relative paths. Note that all four of these fields must be
filled in. You should already have created the directories for your blog
(above, in Setting up your blog directories). Fill in the local paths
(site and archive) with the full paths to those directories. Then enter the
appropriate URLs, corresponding to those directories.
Edit any other configuration settings for your blog; when you are done,
press SAVE
.
If you are using the Unix shell to set permissions, the syntax for setting file and directory permissions is
$ chmod <number> <files>
The above permissions, then, could be set with
$ chmod 755 *.cgi
To determine the symbolic permissions of a file, you can use ls -l:
$ ls -l *.cgi
The listing for mt.cgi, for example, should look like
-rwxr-xr-x 1 <username> users <size> <date>
Symbolic permissions are read in groups of three (omitting the first character): read/write/execute by the owner of the file; read/write/execute by users in the same group as the owner; read/write/execute by all other users.
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