server installation

put the raisin-server tarball onto the server and untar it. move raisin.cgi to your cgi area or wherever you want to use it. you can rename the script to whatever you want, as long as the apache server still knows that it is a cgi script. edit the script with your favorite editor and change what you need to change from the list of configuration variables at the top of the script. be sure to calculate your server URL appropriately to reflect whatever you've named raisin.cgi. make sure that the first line of the raisin.cgi points to a valid python binary; if not, edit it to reflect your python path. write out your changes, then make sure that the file mode on your cgi is 755.

(as an aside, i use the Apache ScriptAlias directive to make my raisin.cgi appear to be /media on my url.)

now, back in the package directory is a script called "passwd-raisin.py" .. run it with "python passwd-raisin.py" at the command prompt. put in the username and password you're going to use for raisin. it will spit out a line with your username and encrypted password. copy this line.

now, create an archive directory. the archive directory is wherever you specified in the first variable of the raisin.cgi script. use mkdir to create the directory. cd into it and use your favorite editor to create a file called ".passwd" (without quotes) .. and paste the line from the passwd-raisin.py program you ran earlier. write out the file with your new user/password combo in it and you're done!

the archive directory has to be writeable by whatever user your cgi is being executed as.. whether that's your own user or 'nobody' or 'www'.. you'll have to discover which user it will run as on your own. without this ability, the raisin.cgi will fail, since it cannot write any sessions or datafiles into it.

client

unpack the client archive and place the script wherever will be most convenient for you to run it. run the client script or executeable and you'll see this:

url: 

which is basically asking for the url to the raisin cgi you installed earlier. if you installed raisin.cgi correctly and entered the appropriate URL, you'll then see a similar prompt for login and password. if the raisin.cgi is misconfigured or not running, it will spit back an error at you and ask for a new URL. if your URL, login, and password are all appropriate, you'll be placed at the raisin command prompt.

see raisin:usage for more details on using the client.