Configuring Current for a specific database is covered in the next section called Setting Up Your Database. This includes all configuration variables that begin with “db”.

Logging is very important for Current. This log file will have important information in it about what the server is doing for each client. It will also have important information regarding any problems and errors that the Current server may experiance. There are two variables that affect logging.

The “log_file” variable should be set to the absolute path of a file where all logs will be written. The default is /var/log/current.log. The “log_level” variable indicates the verbosity of the logs. The lowest value is 0 where only death or life proplems are logged. 10 is the highest. I would recommend a setting of 1. I normally develop with a setting of 4. Settings greater than 5 are not currently used.

The “apache_config_file>” variable defines where the cinstall command will put Current's Apache configurations. The default value of /etc/httpd/conf.d/current.httpd.conf is the proper location for Red Hat style distributions.

The “access_type” variable defines how cinstall sets the permissions on the Current log file and the directories that Apache will serve Current's data from. This can be set to “user” for the Apache user to own these files. The variable can be set to “group” which will put all these files in the Apache group on your system. The value “all” can be used set world writable permissions. This is a security risk and is not recommended. Finally, you may use “none” to do nothing. Setting the proper permissions in this case must be done manually.

The “access_arg” is the user or group that permissions will be given to as described above. This should normally be “apache ”

The following configuration variables and values affect the internal operation of Current or control aspects of the Current/Up2date interaction. The “current_dir” variable is very important. This defines a location in your file system that Current can use for serving out channels, and packages. The default value is /export/current . The cinstall program will create these directories if they do not yet exist.

The remaining variables need to be defined, however the value associated with them is less important. The “welcome_message” and “privacy_statement” are strings sent to the Up2date client. You may wish to define these to reflect your organization's policies. The “server_id” and “server_secret” variables aid in the security of the interaction between Current and Up2date. Both should be set to some arbitrary text and the latter should never be made public. I would suggest a random MD5 sum for the secret.