Putting together Apache, MySQL, CGI and Movable Type in Debian isn't so easy, I learn

I'm doing considerable work in Movable Type with our big-time installation that serves up hundreds of blogs, many of which actually have more than a few readers.

So I figure I should be able to set up my own server on a local network with the open-source version of Movable Type. That way I'll have a better feel for what's going on at the server level. I've already fooled around a bit with Apache in OpenBSD and Debian. I had no problem getting a static Web site up and running.

To run Movable Type, besides Apache, you need MySQL ... and you need to configure everything. Apache must be set up to run CGI scripts. A MySQL database needs to be created. Everything has to be in a certain place, with certain permissions and certain users.

I'll just put it right out there: Movable Type doesn't have anything even remotely approaching the amount of documentation needed to get an installation up and running. The fact that they dump you off to the Apache Web site for that part of the install, then send you to MySQL for that part, and to the PHP site for that part of the installation.

I guess the implication is that you need to get your shit together as far as the server goes, then you can layer Movable Type on top of it.

And just what is Movable Type, anyway? Yes, it's a blogging application, but it's not a monolithic executable file. You don't download a different version for Linux, Unix or Windows. What?

It looks like Movable Type is a whole bunch of HTML coding and other various scripts that draw their real power from the Web server, database and other scripting languages on the system.

This isn't much of a revelation for those of you who know what you're doing, but the whole point of this blog, for me anyway, is to actually try to learn something. Lots of somethings, really.

For some reason I thought that Movable Type would be able to walk me through all the various tasks I would have to do to go from nothing to a full blogging platform. Not so much.

So how did I do? I already had Apache 2.2 on a fresh Debian Etch install. I used Synaptic to get MySQL. I downloaded the Movable Type files.

Here's my problem. I just don't know enough about Apache. And I'm not all that crazy about the documentation on the Apache site. I needed to move the DocumentRoot. I'd already done so once before, and I finally was able to do it again.

As far as setting up CGI, I had all the scripts ready to execute with chmod 755, and I tried to get Apache to let me run them. I just couldn't make it happen. I had a cgi-bin directory, and I pointed to it with ScriptAlias ... but I just couldn't get a script to run.

Part of the confusion, for me anyway, is that I don't know why there's both apache2.conf and httpd.conf. And with httpd.conf being pretty much empty, I'm wondering why both of these files exist and which one should contain which configuration information. I swapped stuff between them, starting and stopping Apache in the interim to test the cgi scripts. (I did apache2ctl stop and apache2ctl start).

I had already created a database. I barely know how I did it. I'll use phpMyAdmin next time to make it all easier.

What I really need is a good LAMP server book to walk me through all this.

I'm not giving up. I will start from scratch next week, starting with a fresh Linux install and doing things in a somewhat more methodical manner: install Apache, get CGI working, install MySQL, create database (hopefully I'll get that right), install PHP, install Movable Type files. Hopefully with CGI working I'll be able to actually set the damn thing up.

Clearly I need a book that covers Apache 2.2, PHP and MySQL.