Caucus System Requirements |
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Caucus must be installed on the same host that is running a compatible web server. Caucus must have its own userid, which owns and contains all of the Caucus data files and programs. Caucus uses the "setuid" bit to control and protect access to its conference data files. (Caucus does not run as setuid 'root'.)
The rest of this page describes specific system requirements and resource usage.
Platforms:
Caucus runs on the following Unix platforms
(and in principle, can run on any unix server):
- DEC UNIX (aka Tru64, OSF/1 v4.0)
- FreeBSD 3.2+
- Linux (2.2+ kernel)
- MacOS X
- Solaris 2.9 (Sparc)
Web Server Requirements:
Caucus is compatible with
most full-featured Web servers.
(See "What Web Servers Does Caucus Work With?".)
Other Software Requirements:
Some of Caucus' extended features require
MySQL,
although it will run without it.
Disk Space Requirements:
The Caucus kit requires
approximately 25 megabytes to install.
(That is the maximum size, some systems may need less.)
We recommend, however, starting with 100MB of space to allow
room for growth of the conferences.
Memory Requirements:
Caucus has run on systems as small
as an Intel 486 with 16MB of memory.
A more typical "modern" linux system with a Penitum processor
would have at least 128M.
Caucus uses approximately
(N + 1) * 0.6 MB of memory,
where N is the
number of simultaneous Caucus users.
Process Requirements:
Each simultaneous Caucus user gets one dedicated "daemon" or
server process for the duration of their session.
In addition, the request for each Caucus page involves two
other processes: an httpd (web server) process, and a
temporary lightweight process called "swebsock".
Thus, the process load for N simultaneous Caucus users varies from N to 3 * N, depending on how rapidly Caucus requests are being served. A typical number is about 1.5 * N.