This is the AOLserver 4.5 source distribution. AOLserver is available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/aolserver/, a SourceForge hosted site.

# rsync -av rsync://aolserver.cvs.sourceforge.net/cvsroot/aolserver/\* aolserver-cvs-rsync
# git cvsimport -a -k -d $PWD/aolserver-cvs-rsync/ -C aolserver-git aolserver

1. Introduction
2. Documentation
3. Compiling and installing AOLserver
4. Mailing lists
5. Thank You

1. Introduction

AOLserver is a multithread web server with flexible and extensible C and Tcl API's. AOLserver is used for several high traffic, dynamic web applications and services at America Online among other sites.

AOLserver is maintained, enhanced, and distributed freely by the AOLserver community. The home for AOLserver sources and bug/patch database is on SourceForge available at:

http://aolserver.com/

AOLserver is a freely available open source package. See the file "license.terms" for complete information.

2. Documentation

Documentation is available in the "doc" subdirectory of this release. It contains of Unix-style reference manual entries for AOLserver. Files with extension ".1" are for programs (for example, nsd.1); files with extension ".3" are for C library procedures; and files with extension ".n" describe Tcl commands. The file "doc/nsd.1" gives a quick summary of the AOLserver configuration. To view any of the man pages on Unix, cd to the "doc" directory and invoke your favorite variant of troff using the normal -man macros, for example:

	groff -Tascii -man nsd.1 | more

Conversion to HTML may be possible with:

	groff -Thtml -man nsd.1 > nsd.html

If AOLserver has been installed correctly and your "man" program supports it, you should be able to access the AOLserver manual entries using the normal "man" mechanisms, such as

	man -M /usr/local/aolserver/man nsd

3. Compiling and installing AOLserver

AOLserver is known to compile and run on Windows XP, FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS/X 10.4. Ports to other modern Unix platforms such as HP/UX should be easy. To compile and install AOLserver:

3a. Download, configure, build and install Tcl 8.4 or better with threads and shared libraries enabled. To do so, download the latest release from http://tcl.tk and follow the instructions in the included README. You may install Tcl within the directory you intend to install AOLserver (e.g., /usr/local/aolserver) or in some other location. The following should work:

Unix:

% gunzip < tcl8.4.11-src.tar.gz | tar xvf -
% cd tcl8.4.11/unix
% ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/aolserver --enable-threads
% make install

Windows:

c:\tcl\srcdir> cd win
c:\tcl\srcdir\win> nmake -f makefile.vc \
	INSTALLDIR=c:\aolserver OPTS=threads,thrdalloc,symbols \
	install

3b. On Unix, if you don't have GNU make (Linux make is GNU make), install it as AOLserver's makefiles require it. If you're not sure if you have GNU make, try "make -v" to check. You can get GNU make at http://www.gnu.org.

3c. Configure, build, and install AOLserver. The build process requires a working, installed Tcl, and supports Unix and Windows with the same makefiles and a few supporting Tcl scripts. The following should work:

Windows:

c:\aolserver\srcdir> c:\aolserver\bin\tclsh84.exe nsconfig.tcl
c:\aolserver\srcdir> nmake install

Unix:

% /usr/local/aolserver/bin/tclsh84 ./nsconfig.tcl 
% gmake install

The nsconfig.tcl script is designed to work on Unix and
Windows.  The tclsh used to execute the script must be from
the installed Tcl location you intend to use for AOLserver
as nsconfig.tcl will determine certain config settings from
the tclsh environment.  In addition, two options may be
specified:

    -install dir    Specify path to install (default: Tcl directory)
    -debug          Debug build with symbols and without optimization.

On Windows, nsconfig.tcl will create include\ns.mak directly.

On Unix, nsconfig.tcl will call the configure shell script
with the appropriate options to create include/ns.mak.  You
may also run configure directly although it has few additional
features.

3d. Once the binaries are built and installed, create and edit a config file, nsd.tcl by convention. A sample is provided to get started:

% cd /usr/local/aolserver
% cp base.tcl nsd.tcl
% vi nsd.tcl

    Additional configuration examples can be found in the 
    examples/config directory.

3e. Try running the server in a shell window:

% cd /usr/local/aolserver
% bin/nsd -ft nsd.tcl

4. Mailing lists

There is a mailing list for AOLserver to discuss anything from configuration, development, and future direction. To join visit:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/aolserver/

5. Thank You

Thank you for your interest in AOLserver! We hope you find it useful and look forward to hearing from you on our mailing list.