Installation and Configuration of the TANGO Interactive Server-Side Components

This file describes installation and configuration of TANGO Interactive Engine and TANGO Interactive Application Server on both MS Windows and Unix. This document assumes you have certain amount of familiarity with system administration tasks. If you find instructions provided here unclear ask for help your system administrator or contact us.

1. Before Installation

We strongly suggest installation of client components only, before you try to setup your own TANGO Interactive Engine or Application Server.  Not only will you be able to receive information and support from our staff connected to the default WebWisdom.com Meeting Engine, but contact us using our online awareness tool, PeopleWatch, as well.

2. TANGO Interactive Engine

Installation

TANGO Interactive Engine is the central point of TANGO Interactive Internet Collaboratory. You can think of it as a virtual meeting place. There are two distributions of this component:

  • package for MS Windows NT or 2000 (installs as service). To install it, execute the file 'engine\tango-engine-2.0.2.1-win.exe' and follow the instructions in the installation wizard.
  • generic package for Unix. To install it, unpack the file 'engine\tango-engine-2.0.2.1-unix.tar.gz,' for example using a command 'gunzip -c tango-engine-2.0.2.1-unix.tar.gz | tar xvf -" and follow the instructions in the 'Readme' file stored in this archive.

Configuration

TI Engine configuration is performed from Control Panel, TANGO Interactive Engine applet.  Detailed instructions on using it can be found in the documentation installed with the engine.

3. TANGO Interactive Application Server

What is TANGO Interactive Application Server?

As Tango Interactive (TI for short)  is a Web-based system, it executes inside of a web browser--Netscape Communicator or Internet Explorer. Most of the TI software is downloaded to the browser at run time. Hence, crucial TI system components must be placed on an HTTP server before the system can be used. An HTTP server with TI software properly installed is called TI Application Server.

TI Application Server is a collection of Java applets with associated HTML pages and various auxiliary files, placed on an HTTP server. The most important applet among them is the Session Manager. This is the heart of the TI system. Other applets in the distribution are TI Virtual Meeting or Virtual Classroom application modules.

TI Application Server Requirements

TI Application Server can run from any HTTP server. In the following, we provide configuration help for Apache and Netscape FastTrack or Enterprise servers. Other HTTP servers can be used as well.

TI Application Server software comes packaged as a zip archive. On Unix you can use 'unzip' command to uncompress it. If you install the server on MS Windows, you will need WinZip or other tool which can handle '.zip' files.

Installation

  • Select a directory. It is convenient to select a directory in the document tree of your HTTP server, but it is not really necessary.
  • Unpack the distribution to the selected directory.
    On Unix, copy the zip archives from appserver subdirectory on this CDROM to the selected directory, and then run "unzip <filename>" command for all the files.
    On Windows, open the distribution files one by one in WinZip, click "Extract" button and set the target directory to the selected installation directory.

This concludes installation process.

Configuration

Recommended URL to TI Application Server is the following:

http://your.server.com/tango-appserver-2.0/

To set this up, you can proceed as follows.

If you have extracted the zip files in the root directory of your HTTP server you don't need to do anything at all.  Skip to the "Setting up for your own collaboration engine" section

If you have selected another directory, you have to map this directory to the above-defined URL. Procedure to do that varies from server to server, and, unfortunately, we cannot cover it for all HTTP servers currently in use on the Web. We will describe it for Apache and Netscape FastTrack or Enterprise

  • For Apache server:
    • Find the "httpd.conf" file in your server configuration directory. Usually, it's
      C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache\conf\httpd.conf
    • Find the "Aliases" section
    • Put the following line into this section:
      Alias /tango-appserver-2.0 "/absolute_path_of_directory_you_selected"
    • Save the httpd.conf file
    • Restart the server
  • For Netscape server (FastTrack or Enterprise):
    • Find the "obj.conf" file in the configuration directory of your server
    • Find the <Object name="default" section
    • Put the following line into this section:
      NameTrans fn="pfx2dir" from="/tango-appserver-2.0" dir="path_of_directory_you_selected"
    • Save the obj.conf file
    • Restart the HTTP server
    • Please note: if you have an administration server running, the same thing can be accomplished from a graphical interface. Login to the admin server, go to "Content Management", and select "Additional Document Directories" on the left-hand menu. Fill in the blanks and submit. Restart server.

Setting up for your own collaboration engine

TI applications allow you to select one of the few collaboration engines (TI engine is a meeting point or a virtual classroom). As distributed, the TANGO Interactive Application Server will only list the public servers provided by WebWisdom.com.

Suppose you have set up your own engine and you want your Application Server to include it in the selection of available engines.  The procedure to accomplish this is as follows:

  • Go to the directory you have selected for TI Application Server software installation.  Find "sm/conf" directory.
  • In this directory you will find one or more ".tsm" files.  These files are TI Session Manager configuration files. Typically, TI Virtual Meeting configuration file is called "std.tsm", while TI Virtual Classroom configuration file is called "edu.tsm."
  • Open the file you want to add your engine to, and find [servers] section.
  • Add a mnemonic name of your engine there (it is an arbitrary string and must be unique among all engines): 
    [servers]
name+=CPS616
name+=CPS640
......
name+=your_engine_id
  • Create a NEW [Server] section, as in the following example: 
    [Server your_engine_id]
name=CPS714 Classroom server
server=DNS_name_of_machine_running_the_engine
port=engine_port_number
description=Classroom Server for CPS714 Spring 2000
<blank line>
  • Start your TI application. You should see your new engine in the system login window.  If you don't, flush browser cache and try again.