FreeMED Installation Instructions on Debian Linux

Hello. This is my first post here. I came across FreeMED while looking for a solution for a client. I've been fighting with the installation process for a couple of weeks, on and off, while trying to get FreeMED installed so that I could learn the software and come up with a demo. On my fourth computer, it worked, but I couldn't reproduce it. I must have tried the install six or seven times yesterday.

Finally, after I got mine to work on a Toshiba laptop running Kubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft), I decided to document how I did it, using the original post above as well (these instructions are a bit of a hybrid). I then used that doc to install FreeMED on my little home server, a Dell running Debian GNU/Linux testing (etch), successfully. Thus, I feel I must have something worth sharing.

It's likely that I've done things in a way that could be done a lot better or easier. I'm kind of an "intermediate" Linux user, mostly self-taught, so please feel free to point out anything that could have been done better.

# Possible installation instructions for a successful FreeMed install
# on Kubuntu/Ubuntu 6.10 and Debian Etch

# Download the .deb package for FreeMED and REMITT. At the time of
# this writing, those packages were called "freemed_0.8.3-1_all.deb"
# and "remitt_0.3.2-1_all.deb".

# This was tested with Kubuntu 6.10 and Debian GNU/Linux testing (etch).
# If you are using either of these and some of the packages fail to load,
# open up more repositories in your /etc/apt/sources.list

# As root (or sudo -s), and from the folder containing this document:

apt-get -y install apache2 cron cupsys cupsys-client djvulibre-bin \
gs-common imagemagick libpdf-api2-perl libapache2-mod-php4 \
libtext-iconv-perl libxml-parser-perl libxml-simple-perl mysql-client \
mysql-server netpbm pdfjam perl php4 php4-cgi php4-cli php4-curl \
php4-domxml php4-gd php4-mysql tetex-bin tetex-extra xpdf-utils

# Use dpkg to install REMITT

dpkg +i remitt_0.3.2-1_all.deb

# The .deb for REMITT seems to create things differently than I think
# are appropriate for startup...or at least different from what I have
# been seeing, so this next line just makes a symbolic link to kind of
# make it work either way:

ln -s /etc/init.d/remitt.dpkg-new /etc/init.d/remitt

# This insures that REMITT is going to start up on reboot

update-rc.d remitt defaults

# And this starts REMITT

/etc/init.d/remitt start

# You should see "Starting REMITT Medical Billing Service: remitt."

# Choose a username and password for REMITT by replacing "username" and
#"password" in the command below. After you've successfully connected
# to the Freemed system (after the entire installation is completed),
# enter the same username and password that you choose here under "REMITT"
# in "System Configuration."

/usr/share/remitt/bin/sqlite_user_admin.pl create username password

# This next command basically deflates the .deb file to the root directory,
# putting the Freemed files and Apache configuration where they belong.
# I have no idea if this is a "best practice," but it worked for me.

dpkg -X freemed_0.8.3-1_all.deb /

# This modified "postinst" file was extracted from the developer's original
# .deb package (the one you just inflated above), but it had errors. I
# fixed the errors, but I don't know how to build a .deb package, so I just
# pulled it out and I ran it by saving it as an executable file called
# "postinst", then ran it with ./postinst. (My changes are noted, FYI.):

# ***Begin modified postinst file ***

#! /bin/sh -e
# $Id: postinst 2180 2005-09-01 00:40:54Z jeff $
# $Author: jeff $
#
# Post-install directives for FreeMED package

# Patch PHP ini file to have more than 8M per process
# ***The following two "if/then" lines were changed from "if/do" by Kevin McDonald, 01-26-2007
if [ -f /etc/php4/apache/php.ini ]; then
perl -pi -e "s|8M|64M|;" /etc/php4/apache/php.ini
fi
if [ -f /etc/php4/apache2/php.ini ]; then
perl -pi -e "s|8M|64M|;" /etc/php4/apache2/php.ini
fi

# Apache user has to own freemed
echo -n "Updating ownership of freemed to webserver user ... "
chown -Rf www-data.www-data /usr/share/freemed
echo "[done]"

# Change writeable permissions for data/, img/store, etc
echo -n "Updating permissions ... "
# ***The following two chmod lines were changed by Kevin McDonald, 01-26-2007
chmod -Rf a+w /usr/share/freemed/data/cache
chmod -Rf a+w /usr/share/freemed/data/backup
echo "[done]"

# Attempt to create freemed mysql database ... will have no password if
# it has just been installed. Do not run if there is already a freemed
# version installed.
if [ ! -d /var/lib/mysql/freemed ]; then \
echo "Attempting to create freemed database (enter password, or enter if none) ... "; \
mysqladmin -u root -p create freemed 2>&1; \
echo "[done]"; \
fi

# Restart apache ...
echo "Restarting apache to reload configuration files ... "
if [ -f /etc/init.d/apache ]; then \
/etc/init.d/apache restart; \
fi
if [ -f /etc/init.d/apache-ssl ]; then \
/etc/init.d/apache-ssl restart; \
fi
if [ -f /etc/init.d/apache2 ]; then \
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart; \
fi

exit 0

# ***End modified postinst file***

# From a web browser on the server itself, go to http://127.0.0.1/freemed
# You can also usually use http://localhost/freemed, but that actually
# messed up on me once but the IP worked. Go figure.

# Enter "root" as the user and leave the password blank. In the next two
# blanks, choose a FreeMED admin password and verify it. It should confirm
# that you have set up the adminitrative user.

# Continue, then log in with the username "admin" and the administrative
# password you chose. If all went well, you just got logged in.