BlueQuartz installing Mono

Mono allows you to run applications written in .NET programming language on Linux machines.

Historical note: The Mono YUM repository URLs used by this 2008 procedure have been retired. The repository configuration below is preserved for historical context and should not be expected to work today.

Step 1: Install the YUM repository by grabbing the mono.repo file from the Mono website and placing it in the /etc/yum.repos.d/ folder.

— Update 7/22/2011 —

The above file is no longer available. Here is the contents of the mono.repo file that I grabbed previously when it was available. Just take the contents and create a file in /etc/yum.repos.d/ called mono.repo with the following contents.

[mono]
name=Mono for rhel-4-i386 (stable)
# Historical Mono repository URL has been retired.
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

Step 2: Install Mono by executing this command. yum install xsp

The above command should also install these required components

Installing:
xsp                     noarch     1.9.1-0.novell   mono              210 k
Installing for dependencies:
mono-core               i586       1.9.1-2.novell   mono               17 M
mono-data               i586       1.9.1-2.novell   mono              1.8 M
mono-data-sqlite        i586       1.9.1-2.novell   mono              169 k
mono-nunit              i586       1.9.1-2.novell   mono              115 k
mono-web                i586       1.9.1-2.novell   mono              3.0 M
mono-winforms           i586       1.9.1-2.novell   mono              3.9 M

Congratulations you have installed mono and can now execute programs written in .NET on your machine. However I had you install XSP as it is a small webserver that can run a website written in .NET without having to integrate into your existing web application such as apache. If you want to integrate into apache follow the current mod_mono documentation.

Setting up XSP

Step 1: Create a folder that will be the root folder for your website. Example: /home/monoweb/web

Step2: Setup the startup script /etc/rc.d/init.d/xsp for XSP that will host your website. Change permissions to allow execute chmod +x /etc/rc.d/init.d/xsp . Below you will find the example startup script I found on the web that has worked for me.

Step 3: Setup /etc/xsp.conf that the startup script uses to set the port and folder the website exists under. Below is the example contents.

Step 4: Setup XSP to automatically start on reboots. chkconfig xsp on

Step 5: You are now ready to host your website. Simply publish your website files to the root folder you defined and issue this command service xsp start

Contents of /etc/xsp.conf

Note: you should change the –port definition to the port you want to use. Make sure nothing else is using the same port you define.

--port 8082 --root /home/monoweb/web/

Contents of /etc/rc.d/init.d/xsp

Historical script correction (October 2026): The original example contained an inverted PID check and an escaped default case pattern. The script below fixes those issues, handles stale PID files, and checks whether xsp2 exists. Shell syntax was checked with bash -n and dash -n; actual operation on the historical BlueQuartz environment was not tested.

#!/bin/sh
# Startup script for the historical XSP2 service
# chkconfig: 3 84 16
# description: XSP ASP.NET server

PIDFILE=/var/run/xsp.pid
XSP=/usr/bin/xsp2

. /etc/init.d/functions

start() {
    echo -n $"Starting xsp: "

    if [ -f "$PIDFILE" ]; then
        read -r pid < "$PIDFILE"
        if [ -n "$pid" ] && kill -0 "$pid" 2>/dev/null; then
            echo -n $"xsp is already running."
            failure
            echo
            return 1
        fi
        rm -f "$PIDFILE"
    fi

    if [ ! -x "$XSP" ]; then
        echo -n $"xsp2 executable not found."
        failure
        echo
        return 1
    fi

    ARGS=$(grep -v '^[[:space:]]*#' /etc/xsp.conf)
    # Intentional word splitting: xsp.conf contains command-line arguments.
    "$XSP" --nonstop $ARGS > /dev/null 2>&1 &
    pid=$!

    if kill -0 "$pid" 2>/dev/null; then
        echo "$pid" > "$PIDFILE"
        success
        echo
        return 0
    fi

    failure
    echo
    return 1
}

stop() {
    echo -n $"Shutting down xsp: "

    if [ ! -f "$PIDFILE" ]; then
        echo -n $"xsp is not running."
        failure
        echo
        return 1
    fi

    read -r pid < "$PIDFILE"
    if [ -z "$pid" ] || ! kill -0 "$pid" 2>/dev/null; then
        rm -f "$PIDFILE"
        echo -n $"xsp is not running."
        failure
        echo
        return 1
    fi

    if kill -15 "$pid"; then
        rm -f "$PIDFILE"
        success
        echo
        return 0
    fi

    failure
    echo
    return 1
}

restart() {
    stop || return $?
    start
}

case "$1" in
    start) start ;;
    stop) stop ;;
    restart) restart ;;
    *) echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"; exit 1 ;;
esac

exit $?