Relax Installation Guide

1. Relax. There are two distributions, Relax (installation instructions) and Relax for Windows (installation instructions). The former contains complete Perl source code and requires Perl interpreter. This edition runs on a vast array of Unix and Windows systems. Relax for Windows is suitable only for Windows systems (9x, 2000, etc.). On Windows machines this version is easier to install, use and does not require Perl or anything else installed on your computer.
2. Web server log files to analyze. Ask your service provider where these files are located. If they are not available, you can probably generate suitable log files by yourself using the Blue dot script. Please note! It's not necessary to run the web server and Relax on the same machine. You can just download server's log files and run Relax on your own computer.

1. Create a directory for the Relax (e.g. Relax) distribution files:
   % mkdir Relax
2. Copy or download relax-x.xx.zip to the directory created above.
3. Unzip the file:
   % unzip relax-x.xx.zip
4. Give proper permissions to relax.pl, e.g.:
   % chmod 700 relax.pl
5. If your Perl program is not located at "/usr/bin/perl" you will have to change the first line of relax.pl to make it match the location of your Perl program. Use the command "which perl" (or "whereis perl") to find out where your Perl program resides:
   % which perl
/foo/bar/perl
Now you can use your favorite editor, like emacs or pico, to make the modification. Or if you are a hacker like person, with Perl:
   % perl -pi.bak -e 's|#\!/usr/bin/perl|#\!/foo/bar/perl|g' relax.pl

6. Test it:
   % ./relax.pl -h
   or
   % relax.pl -h
   should bring a simple help screen. To create your first Relax report from the supplied sample log files (sample-log-1 and sample-log-2), you can try something like:
   % ./relax.pl -ra1 sample-log-1
   and/or
   % ./relax.pl -crelax.cfg -oreport.html sample-log-1
7. Configure it

You can always run relax.pl as a Perl script
% perl relax.pl [options]
in which case steps 4 and 5 described above are unnecessary.

Please check the Installation and Configuration Service if this looks too complicated.

These instructions are for Relax and Windows 95. Windows 98, NT, NT 2000, XP and DOS installations are probably slightly different. Relax for Windows has separete instuctions.

1. Start DOS window. (Start -> Programs -> MS-DOS Prompt or Start -> Run -> command)
2. Create a directory for the Relax (e.g. Relax) distribution files:
   C:\>mkdir Relax
3. Copy or download relax-x.xx.zip to the directory created above.
4. Unzip the file:
   C:\Relax>unzip relax-x.xx.zip
5. Test it:
   C:\Relax>perl relax.pl -h
   or
   C:\Relax>C:\Perl\perl relax.pl -h
   should bring a simple help screen. To create your first Relax report from the supplied sample log files (sample-log-1 and sample-log-2), you can try something like:
   C:\Relax>perl relax.pl -ra1 sample-log-1
   and/or
   C:\Relax>perl relax.pl -crelax.cfg -oreport.html sample-log-1
6. Configure it

Instead of unzip, you can also use some windows based programs, like PKZIP for Windows to extract files from a zip file. In this case you, can skip the first three steps.

If you want to analyze compressed log files (.gz and/or .bz2) there must be gzip and/or bzip2 programs installed somewhere on the path or in the directory where the Relax was installed.

The final step in installation process in to configure Relax to produce reports that suit your needs. This can be done with:

• Command line switches
• Configuration files (recommended)

The plain text configuration files can be named freely and its possible to have many configuration files for different purposes. These files can even be chained. It's also possible to configure the bahavior of Relax by supplying both configuration file and command line switches at the same time.

The provided relax.cfg sample configuration file lists all items that can be configured. To make modifications to this file, open it with your favorite text editor. Windows users must use an editor that is capable of handling Unix style line end characters (SciTE and PFE are nice free tools for this purpose. If you ask SciTE to treat the file as Perl code, it becomes more readable because of syntax color highlighting.)

Use -c command line switch to employ those settings. E.g.

% ./relax.pl -crelax.cfg -omyreport.html mylogfiles*

If there is no command line on your platform, it's possible to load relax.cfg (or any other configuration file) by defining it in default.cfg.

Some of the most important things to configure are:

• local_urls. Set this to distinguish "local" (internal) and external URLs.
• etsin_domain. Your site's URL to be used in Etsin.
• nickname_realname. To combine many identities of your site (153.1.6.18, mysite.example.com, example.com).
• unzip_app. If you want to analyze gzip (.gz), bzip2 (.bz2) compressed log files.

Please check the Installation and Configuration Service if this looks too complicated.

In many cases the configuration process is a lot easier if you understand the basis of Perl regular expressions. Please check these resources if you are a Perl regexp newbie:

• Perl regular expressions manual page
• Perl regular expression FAQ
• Chapter 4 in Effective Perl Programming book.

1. Navigate to where you downloaded the file and double click the program icon on your machine to begin the Setup program.
2. Follow the on-screen instructions in the setup program.
3. Test Relax: Start -> Programs -> Relax -> Relax. Drag the supplied sample log file and drop in to Relax icon.
4. Configure Relax for Windows: Start -> Programs -> Relax -> Relax Configuration. See also Relax Configuration.

Please check the Installation and Configuration Service if this looks too complicated.

To make most out of Relax and minimize the hassle, it is possible to use the Installation and Configuration Service. This service guarantees that Relax is correctly installed and configured.

Please check the separate Relax Upgrade Guide.

Relax: Just delete the directory or folder where you installed Relax. Relax creates no files of its own and doesn't modify (Windows) registry settings in any way.

Relax for Windows: Start -> Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs.