On platforms other than Debian, Cedar Backup is installed from a Python source distribution. [21] A Python source distribution is much like a CPAN Perl distribution, [22] except that it typically does not include dependency-checking information. This means that you will have to manage dependencies on your own.
Most Linux distributions provide an automatic or semi-automatic way to install packages like the ones Cedar Backup requires (think RPMs for Mandrake or RedHat, or Gentoo's Portage system). If you are not sure how to install these packages on your system, you might want to check out Appendix B, Dependencies. This appendix provides links to “upstream” source packages, plus as much information as I have been able to gather about packages for non-Debian platforms.
Cedar Backup requires a number of external packages in order to function properly. Before installing Cedar Backup, you must make sure that these dependencies are met.
Cedar Backup is written in Python and requires version 2.3 or greater of the language. Version 2.3 was released on 29 July 2003, so by now most current Linux distributions should include it. Cedar Backup also requires one non-standard Python module, called PyXML (version 0.8.2 or better). You must install these Python dependencies on every peer node in a pool (master or client).
Additionally, remote client peer nodes must be running an RSH-compatible server, such as the ssh server.
Master machines require several other system utilities, most having to do with writing and validating CD media. On master machines, you must make sure that these utilities are available:
mkisofs
cdrecord
eject
mount
unmount
volname
An RSH-compatible client, such as ssh
Python source packages are fairly easy to install. They are
distributed as .tar.gz files which contain
Python source code, a manifest and an installation script called
setup.py.
Once you have downloaded the source package from the Cedar Solutions website, [20] untar it:
$ zcat CedarBackup2-2.0.0.tar.gz | tar xvf -
This will create a directory called (in this case)
CedarBackup2-2.0.0. The version number in the
directory will always match the version number in the filename.
If you have root access and want to install the package to the “standard” Python location on your system, then you can install the package in two simple steps:
$ cd CedarBackup2-2.0.0
$ python setup.py install
Make sure that you are using Python 2.3 or better to execute
setup.py.
Some users might want to choose a different install location or
change other install parameters. To get more information about how
setup.py works, use the
--help option:
$ python setup.py --help
$ python setup.py install --help
In any case, once the package has been installed, you can proceed to configuration as described in Chapter 4, Configuration.