This is yaws, a webserver for dynamic content written in Erlang. To build and install 1. Get and install an erlang system (http://www.erlang.org) 2. ./configure --prefix=/usr/local This will install everything under /usr/local including var files in /usr/local/var/run/yaws and etc files in /usr/local/etc/yaws.* A plain ./configure will install executables under /usr/local/bin and libs in /usr/local/lib/yaws etc and var files will end up under /usr/local/etc and /usr/local/var Note: We can also change the target directory for etc and var directories by using: --localstatedir=DIR for files that should go in /var --sysconfdir=DIR for files that should go in /etc --disable-pam If we for some reason do not want pam support --with-extrainclude=DIR Will add DIR to the include path May be useful if e.g. pam is installed somewhere where its usually not found --with-defaultcharset=String Will set the default charset used in generated page headers. Usually never needed. This way you can precisely control where you install Yaws (This is usefull for computers where you do not have right access to the standard systemdirs). For example: ./configure --prefix=/home/install/yaws --localstatedir=/home/install/yaws/var --sysconfdir=/home/install/etc 2b. Note to packagers (rpm, deb ...) All install targets support the DESTDIR variable. Thus, if we do ./configure --prefix=/usr; make we can subsequently do: DESTDIR=/foo/bar make install All yaws files will be installed under DESTDIR, but all code will assume yaws should be installed under /usr 3. make This will build the system make docs (Optionnal) You can issue this command if you want to build Yaws documentation. make local_install and perform something we call a local install. It will create an executable script in the $HOMe/bin directory and a config file in $HOME/yaws.conf. This is for developers only 4. To test the build, Start as bin/yaws -i This will start a webserver at http://0.0.0.0:8000 Terminate through ^C or > init:stop() 5. as root make install 6. as root Start as /usr/local/bin/yaws -i (this starts an interactive system) 7. This will create a webserver at http://${host} and one at https://${host} 8. as root Edit /etc/yaws.conf 9. Create content in /var/yaws 10a. Start as /usr/local/bin/yaws --daemon --heart This will start a daemon (--daemon) which will be autorestarted when/if it crashes or hangs (--heart) 10b. Or start interactive system as /usr/local/bin/yaws -i