Setup

This document outlines the details for setting up the most recent version of Exyus.

Requirements

There are very few requirements for installing and running Exyus.

Exyus also uses the MVP XML Project.

Install

Installing Exyus is relatively straight-forward. The current version installs with some sample files that you can use to confirm the installation is working properly.

Setup File Space

The first step is to copy the physical Exyus runtime files onto the server. You also need to set up initial file rights for the folders within the runtime folder tree.

  1. Create a folder to hold the Exyus runtime files (c:\exyus\)
  2. Copy the latest exyus_runtime.zip to the target server and expand the ZIP archive into the folder you created in step 1 (Figure 1)
  3. Set the user access for the storage folder (Figure 2)
    1. After expanding the folders from the archive into the target folder, locate the storage folder.
    2. Right-click on the folder and select the "Proeprties" item from the context menu.
    3. On the "Security" tab, highlight the "Users" group and then check ON the "Modify" checkbox.
    4. Click "Apply" and "OK" to save the changes and close the dialog box.

Configure IIS

For this series of steps, you need to use the Internet Information Services Manager.

  1. Create the XCS Virtual Directory (Figure 3)
    1. Open the IIS Manager and expand the tree to find the root of your web server.
    2. Right-click over the root of the web and select "New..." and "Virtual Directory" from the context menu.
    3. Walk through the Virtual Directory Creation Wizard and create a VDir called "xcs" that points to the physical folder you created when you set up the Exyus file space. Be sure to check ON the "Run Scripts" checkbox.
  2. Set the Application Name (Figure 4)
    Right-click on the xcs folder and press the "Create" button to mark the root folder as an application.
  3. Set up URL Mapping (Figure 5)
    1. Right-click on the xcs folder and select "Properties" from the context menu
    2. On the "Virtual Directory" tab, click on the "Configuration" button.
    3. On the "Application Configuration" dialog, select the "Mappings" tab.
    4. Click on the "Add" button to call up the "Add/Edit Application Extension Mapping" dialog.
    5. Enter the location of the ASP.NET 2.0 DLL in the "Executable" input box (mark-root-folder-as-application)
    6. Enter ".xcs" in the "Extension" input box.
    7. Check ON the "All Verbs" radio
    8. Check ON the "Scrtipt Engine" check box
    9. Check OFF the "Check that file exists" check box.
    10. Click "OK" three times to save your changes and close all the open dialog boxes.
  4. Set Security Access for the xcs folder (Figure 6)
    1. Right-click over the xcs folder and select "Properties" from the context menu
    2. Click on the "Directory Security" tab
    3. In the "Anonymous access and authentication control" section, click on the "Edit" button.
    4. Make sure only the "Anonymous Access" check box is checked ON. All other checkboxes should be checked OFF.

Edit Configuration Files

In this step, you need to edit several configuration files with a simple text editor.

  1. Edit the web.config file (Figure 7)
    1. Using the File Explorer, locate the web.config file in the xcs folder.
    2. Open the web.config file with a text editor
    3. Locate the <systemUser> element in the <exyusSecurity> section.
    4. Edit the value in this element to contain your own personal username and password.
    5. Save the changes and close the editor.
  2. Edit the auth-users.xml configuraiton file (Figure 8)
    1. Using File Explorer, navigate to the /config/ subfolder at the root of the web.
    2. Open the auth-users.xml configuration file.
    3. Update the first user in the file (exyus) by replacing the user and password attributes with the values you entered in the systemUser element of the file.
    4. Save your changes and close the file.

Configure ISAPI_Rewrite

The ISAPI_Rewirte tool is a third-party utility that works very much like the mod_rewrite tool for Apache servers. While no strictly required, this version of Exyus assumes that a URL rewriter is installed. You can download a free (for personal use) verison of the ISAPI_Rewrite tool and install it on your server. This section walks you through the details of adding rewrite rules needed for Exyus to work properly.

  1. Open the httpd.ini file for editing (Figure 9)
  2. add the following two rules to the httpd.ini file:
    # start exyus rules
RewriteRule .*(?:/config/|/documents/|/storage/).* [F,I,O]
RewriteRule (.*)/xcs/([^.?]*)(?:\.xcs)?(\?.*)? $1/xcs/$2.xcs$3 [L,I]
# end exyus rules
  3. Save the changes and close the file.

Configure Samples

This installation of Exyus comes with a set of samples that you can use to confirm the runtime is properly installed. All you need to do is make sure the samples are referenced in the web.config at the root of the application.

  1. Open and edit web.config at the root of the xcs site (Figure 10)
  2. In the <httpHandlers> section, make sure the following element is added: 
    <add verb="*" path="*.samples" type="Exyus.Samples.StaticExamples.samplesRoot,Exyus.Samples"/>
  3. Save the changes and close the file.

You can test your installation by pointing your web brower to the following URL:

http://localhost/xcs/samples/

You should see a list of links to other pages in the sample application.