Manual Installation

NOTE: This is the approach you need to take when APACHE SAFE MODE is on.
Getting started

First, you must have the base environment for Mambo as set out in the System Requirement. We have thoroughly tested Mambo on: Linux, Free BSD, Mac OS X and Windows NT/2000. These are recommended platforms, but anything else that can run the 3 pieces of software listed below should do it.

You MUST ensure that PHP has been compiled with support for MySQL, zlib and XML in order to successfully run Mambo.

Getting Mambo

You will find the latest stable version at mamboxchange.com

Installing Mambo

First of all, download the Mambo tar.gz package. You can run Mambo as a full site e.g. http://www.mysite.com, or you can run it in a subdirectory of another site e.g. http://www.mysite.com/mambo/. You just have to edit the configuration.php file to tell Mambo which part of your site it is in. In this example it will run in a directory of a web site:

Make a directory for the web site files e.g.

UNIX - /usr/local/www/public_html/mambo

Windows - c:\apache\htdocs\mambo

Mambo is packaged in gzip and tar format. Uncompress this distribution file into the directory you have created above using Untar or Winzip, for example:

tar -xvfz latest_mambo_version.tar.gz -C /usr/local/www/public_html/mambo/
NOTE: Make sure you have a trailing slash and replace latest_mambo_version with the version you have downloaded.

Now you have to create a database for Mambo in MySQL. You can choose any name you want, but just remember to edit the configuration.php file with the name you choose. Use the mysqladmin command, for example :

mysqladmin -uroot -ppassword create mambo_database_name
NOTE: Replace 'root' and 'password' with the username and password that is used for your MySQL database.

You may also use phpmyadmin (a php based, MySQL Administration tool), instead of the command line tools, as this makes dropping the database in quick and easy. Edit the file sql/mambo.sql and uncomment the very last 6 lines of the file starting:

INSERT INTO `mos_users` VALUES (62, 'Administrator'

Import the SQL into your newly created database, from the sql/mambo.sql text file, for example:

mysql -uroot -ppassword mambo_database_name < sql/mambo.sql

NOTE: Replace 'root' and 'password' with the username and password that is used for your My SQL database.

If you wish to load the sample data provided with the distribution, then run the above command and replace sql/mambo.sql with sql/sample_data.sql. If you require the help support for the Administration section, use sql/help.sql.Copy the file configuration.php-dist to configuration.php in the root of your mambo directory, for example:

UNIX - /usr/local/www/mywebspace/mambo

and update this file with the correct database name, password, host and directory info.
NOTE: Nearly 80% of installation problems are due to an incorrect absolute path. Ensure that you know what the absolute path is.

Here is an example of a configuration.php file:

File System Permissions

On POSIX based systems (like Unix, Linux, etc), you will need to change the permissions. There are two methods to do this, of which the first is recommended:

Telnet, or secure shell, to your server. Enter the following system command:

> ps -ef grep apache

You may have to change the name of the process, depending on your system (for example, the process name could be httpd). You may receive output like the following:

root 7508 1 0 08:58 ? 00:00:00 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd
nobody 7511 7508 0 08:58 ? 00:00:00 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd
nobody 7512 7508 0 08:58 ? 00:00:00 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd
nobody 7513 7508 0 08:58 ? 00:00:00 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd
nobody 7514 7508 0 08:58 ? 00:00:00 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd
nobody 7515 7508 0 08:58 ? 00:00:00 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd
nobody 7521 7508 0 08:58 ? 00:00:00 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd
nobody 7522 7508 0 08:58 ? 00:00:00 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd
nobody 7523 7508 0 08:58 ? 00:00:00 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd

This tells you that the user "nobody" is running the web server process. Change to the Mambo directory. Enter the following system command (substitute the user name appropriate for your system):

> chown -R nobody .

WARNING: Make sure the user you use to ftp or Administer the site is in the file system group, and that all files have the permission set to 775. If you don't you may not be able to edit files on the file system remotely.

- The second method, is to change the permissions of the images/, media/,uploadfiles/ and administrator/backups directories to 707, this should be done recursively:

chmod -R 707 images chmod -R 707 media chmod -R 707 uploadfiles chmod -R 707 components chmod -R 707 languages chmod -R 707 modules chmod -R 707 templates chmod -R 707 administrator/backups chmod -R 707 administrator/components chmod 744 configuration.php

Logging into the administration site

Go to http://www.yoursite.com/administrator/

Username : admin Password : admin

Or you can log in from the front end as an Editor using:

Username : editor Password : editor

Admin email address

When you login to the Administration section of Mambo for the first time, remember to change the email address of the Administrator, to your own. This way you will receive all emails automatically sent by the system. Mambo will prompt you to delete your Installation folder and then refresh the page. This is for security reasons, so that a malicious user cannot change your installation. Until this is done, Mambo will not work.

You are now looking at two menu items, Admin, or Frontend button. You will want to click your admin button, and go straight to the Administration panel, to set up the various configuration features of Mambo.

Your set up has now been completed, and you are ready to MAMBO!