Sage

Some notes on the installation of Sage in a vserver:

Create a vserver, remove tmpfs /tmp in /etc/vservers/sage/fstab as 16M is too short for compilation

Create an account for the compilation

# adduser --disabled-password --shell /bin/false sage

Install packages needed for the compilation + less and screen

# apt-get install gcc-4.1-base make m4 bison flex tar perl binutils \
           libstdc++6-dev g++ openssh-client \
           less screen

Download and compile sources

# cd /opt
# export http_proxy=http://proxy....:8080 
# wget http://www.sagemath.org/dist/src/sage-2.10.tar
# tar xf sage-2.10.tar
# chown -R sage:sage *
# su -s /bin/bash - sage
sage$ cd /opt/sage-2.10/
sage$ make

Time for triple coffee...

To maintain the installation and install optional packages:

sage$ export http_proxy=http://proxy....:8080 
sage$ ./sage -upgrade
sage$ ./sage -optional
sage$ ./sage -i extra_docs-20070208
sage$ ./sage -i openssl-0.9.8d.p1
sage$ ./sage -i pyopenssl-0.6

Create an account to run sage as webserver

# adduser --disabled-password --shell /bin/false saged
# cp /opt/sage-2.10/sage /home/install

Edit the launch script /home/install/sage to point to the right directory:

SAGE_ROOT="/opt/sage-2.10"
# ln -s /home/install/sage /usr/local/bin

To start & stop the webserver as a real daemon, in a screen session, save the following script as /home/install/saged:

#! /bin/sh
# Author: Philippe Teuwen

# Do NOT "set -e"

PATH=/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
DESC="Launching SAGE webserver"
NAME=sage
PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
SCRIPTNAME=/etc/init.d/$NAME
DAEMON=/usr/local/bin/sage
HOST="fqdn.of.the.server"
PORT="8000"
ARGS="-c \"notebook(address=\\\"$HOST\\\",port=$PORT,accounts=true)\""
USER=saged
# Exit if mysql client is not installed
[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0

# Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
[ -f /etc/default/rcS ] && . /etc/default/rcS

# Define LSB log_* functions.
# Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.0-6) to ensure that this file is present.
. /lib/lsb/init-functions

#
# Function that starts the daemon/service
#
do_start()
{
        if [ -e $PIDFILE ]; then
            if ps -p $(cat $PIDFILE) >/dev/null; then
                echo -n -e "\nError: $NAME seems to be already running!"
                return 1
            else
                rm -f $PIDFILE
            fi
        fi
        screen -d -m -S sage su -s /bin/bash - $USER -c "$DAEMON $ARGS"
        # PID of screen
        PID=$(screen -ls sage|grep sage|sed 's/[[:space:]]*\([0-9]\+\)\..*/\1/')
        # PID of su
        PID=$(ps --ppid $PID -o pid --no-headers)
        # PID of sage
        PID=$(ps --ppid $PID -o pid --no-headers)
        echo $PID > $PIDFILE
}

#
# Function that stops the daemon/service
#
do_stop()
{
        if [ -e $PIDFILE ]; then
            PID=$(cat $PIDFILE)
            if ps -p $PID > /dev/null; then
                # kill script
                kill $PID
                rm -f $PIDFILE
                return 0
            else
                echo -e "\nWarning: $NAME was not running."
                echo -n -e "\nCleaning PID file"
                rm -f $PIDFILE
                return 1
            fi
        else
            echo -n -e "\nWarning: $NAME was not running"
            return 1
        fi
}

case "$1" in
  start)
        [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
        do_start
        case "$?" in
                0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
                2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
        esac
        ;;
  stop)
        [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
        do_stop
        case "$?" in
                0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
                2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
        esac
        ;;
  restart|force-reload)
        #
        # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
        # 'force-reload' alias
        #
        log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
        do_stop
        case "$?" in
          0|1)
                do_start
                case "$?" in
                        0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
                        1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
                        *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
                esac
                ;;
          *)
                # Failed to stop
                log_end_msg 1
                ;;
        esac
        ;;
  *)
        echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2
        exit 3
        ;;
esac

:

Install the script:

# ln -s /home/install/saged /etc/init.d
# update-rc.d saged defaults 99 01

If you want to install the jsMath fonts locally on your client for a faster rendering: Download TEX fonts and install them either in ~/.fonts/ or C:\Windows\Fonts