Installing BixServer

BixServer DB Edition

Unix-like systems (Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X)

For users who don't have a pre-existing SQL database, we supply a version of BixServer that has one built-in. We call this the DB edition. All of the features that use the database work straight out of the box without any special configuration. The database server runs when you start BixServer and stops when BixServer stops.

You cannot run it with root privileges on Unix-type systems for security reasons. All features of BixServer work on an unprivileged account.

As ROOT execute the following commands


adduser bixuser
passwd bixuser
su - bixuser
wget http://bixdata.com:/files/BixServer-2.7-linux-1-DB.tar.gz
tar -zxvf BixServer-2.7-linux-1-DB.tar.gz
cd bixdata/
./runserver.sh


or, to make sure bixserver doesn't stop when you close your console, change runserver.sh to use the line:

nohup ./runserver.sh &>out

Connect to your BixServer from BixDesktop by entering the following connect string into the address bar:

server://ipaddress_or_machinename

Compatibility Libraries on Linux

Try the following commands if you get missing libstdc++5 messages

Fedora, Redhat, similar:

yum -y install compat-libstdc++-296 compat-libstdc++-33

Redhat Enterprise, Centos, similar:

up2date compat-libstdc++-33

Debian, Ubuntu, similar:

sudo apt-get install libstdc++5
(or login as root and do)
apt-get install libstdc++5

Windows or Mac

Simply run the Windows or Mac Installer.

BixServer Advance Use Edition

Only install this edition, if the DB version does not work for you.

Unix-like systems (Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X)

To install BixServer with another database:


wget http://bixdata.com:/files/BixServer-2.7-linux-1.tar.gz
tar -zxvf BixServer-2.7-linux-1.tar.gz
cd bixdata/
./runserver.sh


Windows or Mac

Simply run the Windows or Mac Installer

Adding your own Database

• Connect to BixServer from the Desktop, by using the hostname where you installed bixserver (server://yourhostname)
• Go to Setup, and choose to add a database
• Enter the database hostname, username and password
• Click 'Save' to apply the changes

BixServer and MySQL on Windows

If you have not setup MySQL on windows yet, we have included the instructions for your convenience.
To setup MySQL with BixServer follow the following steps:

1. Download and install MySQL 5.0 (we recommend mysql-5.0.18-win32.zip)
2. Download and install MySQL Connector 3.51 (we recommend mysql-connector-odbc-3.51.12-win32.zip)
3. Connect to MySQL with the command line utilities or MySQL Administrator and create a database called bixdata
4. If BixServer and MySQL is not on the same machine, read the section on MySQL permissions
5. Start BixServer and connect using BixDesktop
6. Click the Database Setup button in the left pane
7. Add a database to BixServer by right-clicking on the blue area marked "New" and choosing "New MySQL Server"
8. A new item will have appeared in the Databases list under "New", select it
9. Change the settings so that they match the database you made in step 3 and update them by clicking "Apply"
10. If you want to see if it's working, click "Test server". If the test fails you should go back and check to make sure you entered everything correctly and that MySQL is running.
11. Restart BixServer to enable notification history

BixServer and MySQL on Unix-Like Systems

If you have not setup MySQL yet, we have included the instructions for your convenience.

Follow the same procedure as with Windows, except use the already installed MySQL libraries that came with your Linux distribution.

Some users with recent versions of MySQL installed may have a problem with the dependency on libmysqlclient.so.10.

To solve this problem you can install the MySQL-shared-compat package. It includes old and new versions of the client library.

For RPM-based Linux systems:

Download from mysql.com

You can install by using rpm -i --replacefiles MySQL-shared-compat-5.0.18-0.i386.rpm

If you use this method, make sure that it has the proper version of the library you already have for any apps that may depend on mysql.

For more info see:
Rpm manual for replacefiles option and this mysql manual entry

MySQL Permissions

You can run MySQL on a separate machine from BixData Server. If you do, be sure to set the permissions on MySQL Server to accept connections from the machine where BixData server is installed. This is standard procedure for MySQL tools and applications that connect to MySQL.

For example, let's say you have a database called bixdata, a user called user with a password password. Let's also say that you are running bixserver on 192.168.0.1. You can issue the command:

GRANT ALL ON bixdata.* TO 'user'@'192.168.0.1' IDENTIFIED BY 'password'

See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/grant.html for more information.

You can also test your connection to that machine, outside of BixData, by using a MySQL tool like Administrator or Query Browser