roller on glassfish

Update: roller 4 is a lot faster to setup than 3; see here.

Now my appserver and database are setup, I can install something.
Right on cue, Roller 3.1 shipped . Looks pretty good too.

WARmonger

I want to deploy from a WAR file, but they don’t ship a prebuilt one
(a GPL thing ?).
So I’ll make my own
(this isn’t necessary – glassfish can deploy from a webapp directory easily enough – it just feels neater to me somehow).

planb:/tmp $ wget http://www.apache.org/dist/roller/roller-3/v3.1.0/bin/apache-roller-3.1.tar.gz
planb:/tmp $ wget https://roller.dev.java.net/files/documents/190/51361/required-jars-roller-3.1.tar.gz
planb:/tmp $ tar zxvf apache-roller-3.1.tar.gz
planb:/tmp $ tar zxvf required-jars-roller-3.1.tar.gz
planb:/tmp $ cd apache-roller-3.1/webapp/roller/

Jarring up apache-roller-3.1/webapp/roller will make a WAR. I need to make a couple of tweaks first.

this is how we (configure) Roll(er)

change the salt

First, edit WEB-INF/security.xml and change the ‘salts’ .

(optional) install textile plugin

Textile support is always nice (even without live preview):

planb:roller $ cd WEB-INF/lib
planb:lib $ wget https://roller.dev.java.net/files/documents/190/56103/textile-plugin-3.1.tar.gz
planb:lib $ tar zxvf textile-plugin-3.1.tar.gz
planb:lib $ mv textileplugin/* .
planb:lib $ rm -r textileplugin textile-plugin-3.1.tar.gz
planb:lib $ cd -

To enable the textile plugin, you can tweak roller-custom.properties
or download mine
(which also tells Hibernate that I’m using a postgresql database) to somewhere in your classpath:

planb:roller $ cd WEB-INF/classes
planb:classes $ wget http://files.hellooperator.net/solaris/glassfish/roller-custom.properties
planb:classes $ cd -

(optional) install extra themes

Add some bundled themes if that’s your thing (you might want to prune some out, there are 20+ themes in the bundle):

planb:roller $ cd themes
planb:themes $ wget https://roller.dev.java.net/files/documents/190/56087/opt-themes-roller-3.1.tar.gz
planb:themes $ tar zxvf opt-themes-roller-3.1.tar.gz ; rm opt-themes-roller-3.1.tar.gz
planb:themes $ cd ..

(not really optional) setup mail support

Roller depends on JavaMail for email notifications of comments, inviting people to become
authors, etc.
The relevant part of WEB-INF/web.xml is inexplicably commented out (apparently Tomcat doesn’t need this).
If you want to send any mail, uncomment the following chunk:

   planb:roller $ tail -15 WEB-INF/web.xml
   ....
       <resource-ref>
           <res-ref-name>mail/Session</res-ref-name>
           <res-type>javax.mail.Session</res-type>
           <res-auth>Container</res-auth>
       </resource-ref>
   ....

make the jar

Create the JARfile and copy it up to the appserver:

   planb:roller $ pwd
   /tmp/apache-roller-3.1/webapp/roller
   planb:roller $ jar cf ~/roller31.war .
   planb:roller $ scp ~/roller31.war  root@goldfish:

the little schema

Roller has db creation scripts for most databases (here’s one I made earlier )

planb $ scp  WEB-INF/dbscripts/postgresql/createdb.sql root@goldfish:
planb $ ssh root@goldfish
goldfish # PATH=/usr/postgres/8.2/bin/:$PATH
goldfish # psql -h elephantom.mydomain -U dbuser zonedb < createdb.sql
....creation output snipped....
goldfish #

configure glassfish

asadmin is great if you don’t like web frontends (or taking screnshots..). You can do all the setup from the CLI.

  planb $ ssh root@goldfish
  goldfish #

install a jdbc driver

PostgreSQL ones here .

   goldfish # cd /domains/rollerdisco/lib
   goldfish # wget http://jdbc.postgresql.org/download/postgresql-8.2-505.jdbc3.jar
   goldfish # svcadm restart rollerdisco

NB: I’ve put the JAR into the domain directory so it won’t be lost on server upgrades

create a connection pool

To create a pool called ‘rollerpool’ (’asadmin help create-jdbc-connection-pool’):

   goldfish # /j2ee/bin/asadmin create-jdbc-connection-pool \
   --user admin --passwordfile /domains/rollerdisco/.aspass -s \
   --datasourceclassname org.postgresql.ds.PGSimpleDataSource --restype javax.sql.DataSource \
   --steadypoolsize 4 --maxpoolsize 12 \
   --property portNumber=5432:password=sekrit:user=dbuser:serverName=elephantom:databaseName=zonedb \
   --description "Roller Connection Pool" rollerpool
  Command create-jdbc-connection-pool executed successfully.
  goldfish #

Using any datasources other than PGSimpleDatasource with my glassfish build (b33) didn’t work. I got a lot of

java.lang.Exception: Doh! Couldn't instantiate a roller class

Bug 2779 has all the gory details. There is a workaround in b46, which we’ll be upgrading to in my next gf post.

create jdbc resource

Out of the box (WEB-INF/sun-web.xml), Roller looks
for a pool called ‘jdbc/rollerdb’. So ‘tag’ our connection pool with that name by creating a JDBC datasource and roller will use it:

   goldfish # /j2ee/bin/asadmin create-jdbc-resource \
   --user admin --passwordfile /domains/rollerdisco/.aspass -s \
   --connectionpoolid rollerpool jdbc/rollerdb

create a javamail session

We need a JavaMail session with the name we specified in Rollers web.xml earlier. This one talks to a local MTA:

   goldfish # /j2ee/bin/asadmin create-javamail-resource  \
   --user admin --passwordfile /domains/rollerdisco/.aspass -s  \
   --mailhost localhost --mailuser required_although_i_dont_use_smtp_auth --fromaddress gfadmin@yourdomain.com mail/Session

deploy it

You can autodeploy the WARfile (by copying ‘yourwebapp.war’ to /domains/rollerdisco/autodeploy),
but that’ll run the webapp at /yourwebapp. Instead, I’ll use asadmin deploy :

   goldfish # /j2ee/bin/asadmin deploy \
   --user admin --passwordfile /domains/rollerdisco/.aspass -s \
   --upload --contextroot '/' /root/roller31.war

(’—upload’ physically copies the warfile into the appserver, rather than deploying from it ‘in situ’)

can you hear me now?

If you autodeployed, browse to :

http://yourserver:8080/roller31/

and register an admin user, create blogs, etc.

I setup glassfish running on port 80 so
I can just go to

http://goldfish/

One gotcha: roller creates directories under roller-data/ in the glassfish users home directory.
Just don’t wonder what it is and delete it (bad things happen, trust me).

UPDATE:

I’m an ex-tomcat user and I’ve seen JVMs bleed memory over time, so I put a resource control of around 600Mb RAM on the zone. It seems to be using about half that, and hasn’t grow in the last few weeks.