Lucid OSCAR

Getting Oscar to run on Ubuntu Lucid is not a terribly arduous task. For the most part you can follow this guide, with some modifications of course:

* Don't install Tomcat from the Ubuntu repos. You'll only find Tomcat 6, and it's too much of a hassle to get Oscar to run on that (for now - word is in the Oscar scene that they'll release a new official version around June, and I'll bet you dollars on a dime that it will support the new Ubuntu LTS out of the box). For now, just grab Tomcat 5.5 off of the Apache site, and follow any run-of-the-mill installation guide for it.

* Just go with Ubuntu's default-jdk.

* If you're comfortable with Ubuntu's upstart you don't need to restart the machine, just (re)start the necessary services.

* Don't use the Oscar snapshot referenced in the guide. You may use the Oscar snapshot referenced in the guide, but do not use the pre-archived (09.06) snapshot on the Oscar download page. The MySQL scripts of that version are broken. I've had no problem with the bleeding-edge CVS snapshot. Sometimes the bleeding-edge CVS snapshot breaks, but it works most of the time.
** When running the MySQL script with the bleeding-edge CVS snapshot, where the guide instructs you to just enter the password instead of ****** you need to enter both the username and password, i.e.

./createdatabase_on.sh root <mysql_rootpassword> oscar_mcmaster 

* The SSL certificate line probably won't work for you. I haven't played much with it yet, but until you change it you won't be able to log into Oscar. The oscar.war file contain its own oscar_mcmaster.properties file which WILL override the oscar.properties in your Tomcat directory. For the most part that is no huge problem, except that it also overrides the MySQL password that you set, thus making you unable to log in. You can either set the MySQL password to be the same as the original one in the oscar.properties file (BAD idea), or you can change the oscar.properties file BEFORE running ant.