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Roller 2.1 on GlassFish

Posted by amyroh on February 21, 2006 at 2:46 AM EST
GlassFish_Roller

Deploying Roller 2.1 on GlassFish.


The Roller 2.1 switched its security system to the Acegi security framework and moved away from container managed authentication.  This allows deploying the Roller on GlassFish without having to add a custom JDBC Realm.

Please refer to The Roller InstallationGuide for complete installation and configuration steps for the Roller Weblogger Project.

STEP 1: Prerequisites

Download and install JDK 5 and MySQL.

STEP 2: Download\Install GlassFish

1. Download GlassFish

(
b38 or later for ClassCastException: net.sf.acegisecurity.providers.UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken issue fix)

2. Run:
java -Xmx256m -jar filename.jar

3. cd glassfish

4. Run:
ant -f setup.xml

See the GlassFish Quick Start Guide for basic steps to start the server and deploy an application.

STEP 3: Download\Install Roller

Step 3.1 : Download Roller

  1. Download Roller 2.1. 
    (The official Roller 2.1 release should be out very soon.  For now, you'll have to get it from its subversion repository and build it yourself). 

  2. Unpack the downloaded TAR file.
% cp roller.tgz <temp_dir>/roller
% cd <temp_dir>/roller
% tar xzvf roller.tgz

On Windows: Use winzip to extract roller.zip into <temp_dir>\roller.

Step 3.2 : Minor changes to Roller

Roller web.xml is currently broken since it has a 2.3 DTD, yet it still contains 2.4 elements.  (Discussion is happening on the roller list about this so I think the changes should be in soon) Also, I had to make some changes to jsp files (mainly in login-redirect.jsp and taglibs.jsp) for jstl 1.1 taglib uri upgrade.

You can download working version of roller.war here.

STEP 4: Create Roller tables in your database

Now you need to create a new database, create a user with appropriate privileges, and use an SQL script to create the database tables required to run Roller. To do this, login to your database and run one of the Roller database creation scripts located in Roller's WEB-INF/dbscripts directory.

    • WEB-INF/dbscripts/mysql/creatdb.sql - creates tables for MySQL
    • WEB-INF/dbscripts/derby/createdb.sql - creates tables for Derby
    • WEB-INF/dbscripts/postgresql/creatdb.sql - creates tables for PostgreSQL

The examples below show you how you might do this using MySQL, assuming your Roller user will have username scott and password tiger. For more information on MySQL, refer to the MySQL Reference Manual.

Make sure you enable UTF-8 support in MySQL (see page Setting Up UTF8 on MySQL for details).

UNIX example

 % cd <temp_dir>/roller/WEB-INF/dbscripts/mysql
% mysql -u root -p
password: *****
mysql> create database roller;
mysql> grant all on roller.* to scott@'%' identified by 'tiger';
mysql> grant all on roller.* to scott@localhost identified by 'tiger';
mysql> use roller;
mysql> source createdb.sql
mysql> quit

Windows example, from an MS-DOS or Command Prompt window:

 C> cd <temp_dir>\roller\WEB-INF\dbscripts\mysql
C> mysql -u root -p
password: *****
mysql> create database roller;
mysql> grant all on roller.* to scott@'%' identified by 'tiger';
mysql> grant all on roller.* to scott@'localhost' identified by 'tiger';
mysql> use roller;
mysql> source createdb.sql
mysql> quit

Notes:

MySQL users, don't forget to call "flush privileges" and make sure that your MySQL installation hasn't set the skip-networking option. Connector/J can only access MySQL via TCP/IP. The MySQL command line tool however doesn't use TCP/IP sockets by default. To check whether your connect works, use anything other than "localhost" as host, for example:

 mysql roller -h 127.0.0.1 -u scott -ptiger

STEP 5: JDBC connection

Step 5.1 : JDBC driver jar

Download MySQL Connector/J and copy the jar into glassfish_install_dir/lib
(ex. glassfish_install_dir/glassfish/lib/mysql-connector-java-3.1.12-bin.jar).

You can also add the jar to the classpath via Admin GUI
(Admin GUI -> Application Server -> JVM settings -> Path Settings -> Classpath Suffix) or domain.xml edit (<java-config classpath-prefix="...." classpath-suffix="" ....> )

Step 5.2 : JDBC Connection Pool Setting

Create JDBC Connection Pool (Admin GUI -> Application Server -> Resources -> JDBC -> Connection Pools)

jdbc_connection_pool.JPG

<jdbc-connection-pool allow-non-component-callers="false"
datasource-classname="com.mysql.jdbc.jdbc2.optional.MysqlConnectionPoolDataSource">
<property name="user" value="scott"/>
<property name="port" value="3306"/>
<property name="password" value="tiger"/>
<property name="databaseName" value="roller"/>
<property name="serverName" value="localhost"/>
</jdbc-connection-pool>

Step 5.3 : JDBC Resource Setting


Create JDBC Resource (Admin GUI -> Application Server -> Resources -> JDBC -> JDBC Resources)
<jdbc-resource enabled="true"
jndi-name="jdbc/rollerdb" object-type="user" pool-name="MySQL"/>


STEP 6: Deploy Roller to GlassFish

Step 6.1: sun-web.xml 

Create sun-web.xml file to <temp_dir>/roller/WEB-INF directory.

sun-web.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!--
Copyright 2004-2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Use is subject to license terms.
-->

<!DOCTYPE sun-web-app PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Application Server 8.1 Servlet 2.4//EN" "http://www.sun.com/software/appserver/dtds/sun-web-app_2_4-1.dtd">

<sun-web-app>

<session-config>
<session-manager>
</session-manager>
</session-config>

<resource-ref>
<res-ref-name>jdbc/rollerdb</res-ref-name>
<jndi-name>jdbc/rollerdb</jndi-name>
</resource-ref>

<class-loader delegate="false"/>

</sun-web-app>
<class-loader delegate="false"/> is to address "ClassNotFoundException: org.hibernate.hql.ast.HqlToken" reported.  See Jan's blog for more details.

Step 6.2: Create war file

% cd <temp_dir>/roller% jar cvf ../roller.war *

Step 6.3: Deploy roller.war to GlassFish

Deploy <temp_dir>/roller.war to GlassFish
(Admin GUI -> Application Server -> Applications -> Web Applications -> Deploy)

Step 6.4: Security permission

Add security permission in glassfish_install_dir\glassfish\domains\domain1\server1\config\server.policy.

// permission for Roller: file upload, log setting, etc :
grant codeBase "file:${com.sun.aas.installRoot}/domains/domain1/applications/j2ee-modules/roller/-" {
permission java.security.AllPermission; };
grant codeBase "file:${com.sun.aas.installRoot}/domains/domain1/generated/jsp/j2ee-modules/roller/-" {
permission java.security.AllPermission; };

Although the above security permission works, more specific and restrictive settings might be appropriate.

Now you should be able to check out your Roller app by accessing http://localhost:8080/roller and register your first admin user.  Check out the Roller UserGuide for more info.

Thanks to Allen Gilliland from the Roller team for helping me with Roller questions.

References:  Roller Installation Guide and Roller Installation Guide on SJSAS7SE
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