NATS Requirements
Software Requirements
Please verify the following programs are installed. Your host can install any missing or out-of-date programs.
- Linux or Unix, including BSD, Macintosh OS X, and Darwin
- Apache
- Must not use mod_security
- Must not use Safe Mode
- MySQL version 5.0; we prefer MySQL version 5.1 for its database partitioning capability. Future versions of NATS4 will require MySQL 5.1.
- MySQL must also be accessible from the CLI, which may require changes to the my.cnf file
- must have cURL, FreeType with Open SSL, GDlib, and mcrypt (with blowfish and ecb support) included)
- Ensure that NO_UNSIGNED_SUBTRACTION is enabled
- MaxMind GeoIP. You must have at least the free version.
- PHP 5.2.
- Enable
short_open_tagin your server's php.ini - Apache and the CLI must allow exec commands from PHP
- Enable
- PHP CLI (should be the same version used by apache and should use the same php.ini)
- unzip must be installed in /usr/bin/
- CVS
- Ensure your firewall doesn't block port 2401
- GNU Tar with Gzip
- Zend Optimizer or Ioncube
- Zend: ensure you use Zend 2.6.2 or higher. We will tell you how to install the NATS Zend license after we install NATS
- Ioncube: (preferred) ensure the "enable_dl" setting is turned on in php.ini
Server Requirements
NATS requires a Web-accessible domain. It should be the domain you plan on using permanently. For example: nats.example.com. Your domain must be Web-accessible before we start installing NATS.
We also require secure shell (SSH) access. Please give us access to the same account you use to log in to the server. The account must be allowed to create files and folders in your user directory and replace the Apache VirtualHost directory with a symlink to your user directory. The user account must also be able to create a crontab entry.
Please create a new database in the current MySQL server. Grant all access to that database to a username and password of your choosing. Commands to create a database and grant all access to a specific user can be found in the MySQL documentation.
Please remove any server administration software. Server administration software might break NATS. We cannot support NATS issues arising from the interaction with server administration software.
Dedicated Server Required
For numerous reasons, NATS will not be installed on a shared server (this includes VPS systems). Performance issues, load issues, permissions issues, and directory restriction issues are just some of the potential reasons why it has been determined that NATS installations on a shared server cannot realistically be done. It's also common that shared servers will use control panel programs and/or have too many restrictions on functionality to operate properly or predictably.
Installation Information
After you server meets the above requirements, please send us the following information:
- The SSH server IP or host address
- The SSH username
- The SSH password
- The SSH port
- The MySQL host name (even if its localhost, please specify)
- The MySQL database name
- The MySQL username
- The MySQL password
- The NATS admin and affiliate area domain
- The Apache document root for the above domain
- Please give us written permission to overwrite the contents of this directory
- What type of encoding to use: Ioncube (preferred) or Zend
We will email the above instructions to you after you purchase NATS. Please contact us if you have any questions even before your installation begins. You host can help you with any questions you have about the software on this list.
