Hey guys, I've been gone the last few days so I'm sure I'm going to
rehash lots of comments/questions. If nothing else, I hope it can
serve as a reminder to anyone scanning the archives that
well-informed, detailed questions are a Good Thing.

Bob, I'm not attacking you but I'd like to repeat a few questions, ask
one or two of my own and sprinkle in a couple of comments.

2009/2/26 Bob Radvanovsky <[email protected]>:

> (2) I have Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 loaded on it WITH EVERYTHING LOADED.  
> I chose the "Use Everything" option.
> (3) I have downloaded OpenSSL 0.9.8. configured, compiled and installed.
> (4) I have downloaded Apache 2.0.63, configured, compiled and installed.

Given (2), why (3) and (4)? When I was doing a feasibility test of
cosign for our University I used a combination of FreeBSD
servers/clients and RHEL 5 servers/clients. Every package except
cosign was handled inside the distribution's package manager (or in
Ports on FreeBSD) and everything built/installed fine.

> (6) I have downloaded CoSign 2.1.0 from the web site, configured, compiled 
> and have attemped to install it.
>
> Nuttin'.

By "nuttin'", you mean...? At what point are you reaching failure?

> There are MULTIPLE instructions for installing this software.  There are 
> multiple methods for utilizing whatever path you choose.
>
> ...and yet, no tickie, and no washie.

Which instructions did you follow? Did you follow
README/README.weblogin, wiki instructions, what? Not to say that the
README has *all* of the necessary information for *all* platforms, I
have my own personal HOWTO that I keep handy that is FreeBSD specific
and we have another that is RHEL specific, but they had enough
information that I was able to get the software built and installed.
At what point did/do things break?

> For whatever reason, I cannot get this software to compile and install 
> correctly.  If I understand this correctly, this is to be the "front door" 
> for a portal server that, based on the user's ID and password, and based upon 
> their rights granted, would grant them permissions of various levels of 
> applications based from their login ID and password authentication.  Right?

This is a "front door", yes. To use that analogy it is the component
that says, "username and password?" and then "access granted to
resources" or "access denied". All it does is authenticates. Since it
sounds like your portal will handle authorisation, that's not an
issue.

To get back to the point, though - is it that you can't get it to
install or can't get it to compile? What are the compile errors?

> If I say much more, I'll probably piss off the community some more than I 
> already have.

If anything I'd say you haven't said nearly enough. Post the build
errors, let the community know what your actual problems are rather
than just the conclusions you've reached. Usually it's something minor
that is overlooked.

For example, I was trying to build reconnoiter a few weeks ago on a
FreeBSD machine. The ports system places pretty much anything
installed in /usr/local (what I consider to be the appropriate place
for installed software that doesn't come in the base distribution). I
was getting a build error about the uuid-generator library not being
found and couldn't for the life of me figure out why. A quick post to
the reconnoiter-users list and the project lead came back with, "are
you including the appropriate library location in your LD flags?".
Whoops, no, I'm not. Something minor, a single flag passed to
./configure, and my headaches were resolved. I've seen the same thing
happen on this list several times but that occurrence was fresh on my
mind.

> Sorry...this product does NOT work.

I'm sure that multiple universities and businesses that use this
product on a daily basis, on every GNU/Linux distribution from RedHat
to Gentoo and several of the BSDs, would quite loudly argue that it
does, indeed, work.

kmw

-- 
Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even
if chequered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who
neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey
twilight that knows not victory or defeat.

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