Installing the W3C HTML Validator on JeOS

Sunday, May 03, 2009

So. W3C has quite decent installation instructions for the HTML validator, but it makes a few assumptions about a typical linux environment that don’t actually hold true if you’re running a stripped down JeOS distro in a virtual machine.

Here’s what I ended up doing to get the software working on my VM. Hopefully it’ll work for you too. :)

Install Apache2:

sudo aptitude install apache2 apache2.2-common apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils libexpat1 ssl-cert

Turn on SSI:

sudo a2enmod include

Install OpenSP SGML parser:

mkdir ~/src
cd ~/src
curl -O http://switch.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/openjade/OpenSP-1.5.2.tar.gz
tar xzvf ./OpenSP-1.5.2.tar.gz
cd OpenSP-1.5.2
./configure --enable-http --disable-doc-build && make && sudo make install

Install perl dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev

sudo perl -MCPAN -e shell
...
install Bundle::W3C::Validator
install SGML::Parser::OpenSP

Install cvs:

sudo apt-get install cvs

Checkout the validator code into `/usr/local/validator

$ cd /usr/local
$ sudo mkdir /usr/local/validator
$ sudo chmod a+w /usr/local/validator
$ export CVSROOT=":pserver:anonymous@dev.w3.org:/sources/public"
$ cvs login
CVS password: anonymous
$ cvs get validator

Adjust the default configuration file a bit:

Change the directory for the two AliasMatch lines at the top of the file. For whatever reason, they’re pointing to the wrong place. The first ought point to /usr/local/validator/httpd/cgi-bin/check, the second to /usr/local/validator/httpd/cgi-bin/sendfeedback.pl.
```
AliasMatch ^/+w3c-validator/+check(/+referer)?$   /usr/local/validator/httpd/cgi-bin/check
AliasMatch ^/+w3c-validator/+feedback(\.html)?$ /usr/local/validator/httpd/cgi-bin/sendfeedback.pl
```
Comment out the <Proxy> block at the bottom of the file.

Symlink the validator config into /etc/w3c

sudo ln -s /usr/local/validator/htdocs/config /etc/w3c

Symlink the configuration file from CVS to the /etc/apache2/sites-available/ directory:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/validator/httpd/conf/httpd.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/

Enable the new site:

sudo a2ensite validator

Reload the Apache config:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

Test the checker:

/usr/local/validator/httpd/cgi-bin/check uri=http://www.w3.org/

Win!

— Mike West