This is yaws, a webserver for dynamic content written in Erlang. To build and install 0. Get and install an Erlang system (http://www.erlang.org) 1. If you've cloned the source from github and you want to build using configure and make, note there is no ./configure script in the source, so create one: # autoconf 1.b Install build-deps. On Ubuntu/debian this is pretty much equal to # apt-get build-dep yaws 2. You can build using rebar: # rebar compile or via configure and make: # ./configure --prefix=/usr/local If using rebar, you'll get a local installation with yaws in $HOME/bin and the yaws configuration file in $HOME/yaws.conf. If using configuration and make, the build will be configured by default for installation under /usr/local including var files in /usr/local/var/run/yaws and etc files in /usr/local/etc/yaws. NOTE: With configure, you 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 useful 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 (Optional) You can issue this command if you want to build Yaws documentation. make local_install This will create an executable script in the $HOME/bin directory and a config file in $HOME/yaws.conf. This is for developers only. This is the only type of installation "rebar compile" supports. 4. To test the build, start it as ./bin/yaws -i If you used rebar to compile yaws, you can alternatively start yaws with $HOME/bin/yaws -i Either approach will start a webserver at http://0.0.0.0:8000 . Terminate through ^C, or ^G followed by q, or > init:stop() NOTE: If you've used rebar to build the system, none of the following directions apply. With rebar only local installations are supported. 5. as root make install 6. as root start as /usr/local/bin/yaws -i This starts an interactive system. 7. With the default yaws.conf file, this will create a webserver at http://${host} and one at https://${host} 8. as root edit /usr/local/etc/yaws/yaws.conf 9. Create content in /usr/local/var/yaws/www 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) Also, for most unices, we create proper start scripts in /etc/init.d (sysconfdir) 10b. Or start interactive system as /usr/local/bin/yaws -i 11. Example: Here is how I compile/start the yaws system that runs at http://yaws.hyber.org (Ubuntu server system) # autoconf # ./configure --sysconfdir=/etc # make && make install # /etc/init.d/yaws start