# MiniVend V3.14-4
#
# Copyright 1996-1998 by Michael J. Heins
#
# Largely based on Vend 0.2
# Copyright 1995 by Andrew M. Wilcox
#
# Portions from Vend 0.3
# Copyright 1995,1996 by Andrew M. Wilcox
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

-------------------------------------------------------------
M I N I V E N D O N W I N D O W S

System Requirements:

* Windows 95, 98 or Windows NT. Tested on Windows 95 OSR2.

* Perl 5.004 for Win32 or higher -- accept no substitutes. THIS
PROGRAM WILL RUN ON NO EARLIER VERSION OF PERL. PERIOD. It
will not run on the ActiveState port build 3xx series; it
does appear to run very well with the "Merge" of the build
500 series. The version you probably want is also variously
known as the "CORE", "Standard", or "Gurusamy Sarathy" version.

* Web server. Almost any that has CGI capability
should work. Tested on Microsoft Personal Web Server,
NT IIS, and OmniHTTPD.

* Memory, memory, memory -- best guess is that things
will not run well on less than 32 MB of RAM, but your
mileage may vary. I don't trust the Windows system
performance indicator, as it indicates 86% free RAM on
my machine with 32M while MiniVend is running. I find
it hard to believe. That is the smallest RAM machine
I have, and MV ran fine on it -- it is a 486DX/100.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you use the Windows notepad or other editor which
willy-nilly adds carriage returns, and you edit
configuration files that may contain Perl code, or
that use EOF markers, or have data, you may have to
remove carriage returns before running MiniVend. If
you have problems, perform the following commands from the
DOS prompt:

perl -npi.bak -e "s:\r::g"

The error "illegal character \015" would be an indication
of this problem.

There are also reports that using DOS edit causes problems
with profiles.

Prior to Installation:

1. Make sure Perl 5.004 is fully installed. Perl 5.004
is mandatory -- you can get it at:

http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/win32/Standard/x86/

A list of CPAN sites is always available at:

http://www.perl.com/CPAN

2. From the same place you obtained Perl 5.004, get the
DB_File module, latest version of which is 1.54
at this writing. Install it according to the
instructions in the README.NOW file.

If you have the ActiveState Perl 5.005, it should
work OK once you use the PPM (find it in your
/perl/5.005XX/bin/ppm.pl) and get the following
modules:

DB_File
MIME-Base64
libwww

The last two are to allow the new internal HTTP
server to work and provide a semi-GUI installation.

MiniVend might run without OK without DB_File, but
the user database will not be persistent and there
will be other anomalies.

3. Obtain and install BLAT if you wish to
send emailed orders.

http://gepasi.dbs.aber.ac.uk/softw/Blat.html

Adjust the catalog.cfg parameter SendMailProgram
according to the path that you install it at -- MiniVend
should find it if it is in your path, and append the
right options. An example of a SendMailProgram:

SendMailProgram blat - -t

(You must run 'blat -install' before it will work. Try
testing blat from the command line if your order is
not sent.)

Installation:

1. Download the minivend-3.14-4.exe distribution file
and run it in the normal Windows fashion.

( If you don't want to execute the self-extracting ZIP file,
then you can obtain the standard minivend-3.14-4.tar.gz file and
install that instead. )

You will have to obtain the CYGWIN.DLL file if you want to
use TLINK.EXE as your link CGI. The standard distribution .EXE
file has it included -- the minivend-3.14-4-nodll.exe file
eliminates it.

2. Select a directory to install MiniVend in -- it defaults
to /mvend on the default hard drive but you may put it anywhere.

3. You will need to know where your Web document root and
CGI directories are located. The defaults are set for
Microsoft personal web server.

4. If your catalog is for testing purposes, you can
use the server name "127.0.0.1". If you want the catalog
to be accessible from the outside world, you will have
to enter a valid IP address or server name.

5. MiniVend will run as a service if you set it up with
srvany.exe or a similar program. Because the server
is single-tasked, it is recommended that you set up
a system agent to shut down the MV server, expire the
session database, and restart at least once per day.
(Expiration will always be needed to prevent the DBM files
or session directories from getting too big, and possible
memory leaks in Safe.pm make this a good idea anyway.)

6. Be careful of long-running searches -- because the server
will not handle multiple simultaneous requests as it does
on UNIX, searches will hold off user access. It is recommended
that you break your results pages into small (less than the
default 50-result) chunks by setting mv_matchlimit.

-------------------------------------------------------------

W I N D O W S D I F F E R E N C E S

* ODBC works fine, but you will need to have the
DBI::ODBC module properly installed. DBI also works
with MS SQL Server according to user reports.

* No fork() on Windows means that only one server
can run at a time. This means multiple requests
will be queued. In any case, lack of file locking
would mean big problems for multiple servers. Perl's
threading is too experimental to do the work required
to make MV thread-safe.

* Since the server runs in the foreground, if you change
global variables in your embedded Perl you must be careful
to reset them. In particular, the FRAMES version of the
3.14-4 demo will not work correctly.

* Some of the support scripts will not work, and some
might not behave as in the documentation. In particular,
the expire script must not be run while the server
is running, as no file locking is available.

* You will need to hit Ctrl-C twice to stop the server
with some ports of Perl. If you can't stop the server,
close the DOS box.

* Memory leaks in the Safe.pm module may mean that
you will need to restart the server due to running
out of memory. It is recommended that you shutdown
and restart at least once a day.