Installing a BitNami Apache Tomcat Stack for use with ESS

8/29/2011

 

BitNami is an open source installer project that is supported by BitRock, Inc.   BitRock has a lot of experience producing installers.  We test ESS with the BitNami tomcatstack.  If you don’t already have a Web, application and data server setup that can handle ESS, setting up a BitNami stack is probably the easiest way to do it.

 

First, in order to install the stack, you’ll need to go to:

 

http://bitnami.org/stack/tomcatstack

 

BitNami has native installers for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X machines.  They also have installers for VMware and the Amazon cloud.  The BitNami stacks allow you to run several stacks on you server without them interfering with each other.  They can also be uninstalled easily if you are using them in a test environment.

 

For the rest of this document, we will use the Windows installer (bitnami-tomcatstack-6.0.32-0-windows-installer.exe). 

 

Installing on Windows

(see below for Linux instructions)

 

Download the installer and execute it on the server that you want to run ESS on.  You see this screen:

 

The BitNami installer will take you through a series of screens.  During your installation, you may notice that some of the screens will be skipped.  If the installer detects that it can use the standard convention for port addressing (e.g., 3306 as the address of the MySQL port) it will use that.

 

Note: Conflicts can arise if services are shutdown.  For example, if you have an Apache server running on port 80 and that service is shutdown, the installer has no way of detecting this and will go ahead and assign the new instance of Apache to port 80.  This means that you cannot have both servers running at the same time.

 

Import Note:  Record all the information and choices that you make during this installation as you will need it to complete the installation of ESS.

 

 

Select the Next button to start the installation process.

 

 

 

 

You can change the location of the installation if you’d like.  Note:  The “default” location for ESS is in /var/ess in both Windows and Linux.  The installation instructions for ESS 7.0 call for the use of symbolic links so there is no overwhelming advantage to change the default location of the stack.

If you get this screen, it means that you already have a service running on port 80.  Select another port number to use for access to ESS.  Reminder, you’ll need to include the port in the URL that you are testing with.  Say you change the 80 to 8080, and you are going to address ESS as the localhost, you’ll need to use the URL

 

http://localhost:8080/ess/ess/Login.html

 

as the URL.

 

If you enter a port, in any of the screens, that is being used, you’ll receive an error box telling you to try again.

 

Next the installer will gather information on how you want MySQL setup.  If the default MySQL port is being used, you will get the following screen.

 

 

Enter the port number to use for the MySQL server.  The default MySQL port is 3306.  If you see this above screen that port is already in use, so choose another screen and record your choice.

 

 

Next, you’ll be asked for the MySQL root user password.  You will need to know this password when you setup ESS so make a record of it.

 

 

 

 

After the information for MySQL has been collected, the installation process will gather information on how to set up Tomcat with the following screen.

 

In the top field enter the domain name or IP address for your server.  The above example uses 192.168.1.200 which is a server that we have on our local area network.  For simple tests being run on a PC, the 127.0.0.1 or localhost can suffice.

 

If any of the port information provided in the above screen conflicts with any other port usage on this server, you will be prompted to put in new information.

 

The installer will also configure the Tomcat manager.  The manager can deploy, configure, and control the applications running under the Tomcat server.  The actual duties are beyond the scope of this document, but you will need to provide the manager’s Tomcat login ID and a password.  We suggest leaving the username as manager and making a note of the password.

 

 

 

After you have designated a manager, the actual installation will take place.  You’ll need to use Next to go through the next two screens.

 

 

After these two screens the physical process will take place.  It can take several minutes

 

When you are done, the installer will give you a complete notice and the option of starting the three services that are part of the stack. 

 

 

Note: In the Windows Services window, the three services are named:

 

tomcatstackApache

tomcatstackMySQL

tomcatstackTomcat

 

and their Startup Type is listed as Automatic.  This means that every time you start this server, these services will start.

 

 

There is also an entry group to the server’s Start menu.  You can start, stop, and uninstall the stack with the group’s entries.

 

After you have installed the stack, you will be able to install ESS on the server.

 

Some of the parameters that you entered can be found in the properties.ini file in the “Bitnami Apache Tomcat Stack” folder if you forget them.

 

Installing on Linux

 

To install the Bitnami stack on Linux is a little bit easier.

 

After you have downloaded the Linux installer, you will need to make the .bin file executable:

 

chmod +x bi*

 

You may need to be logged on as the root user. 

 

After you have made the installation .bin file executable, you can run it:

 

./bi*

 

Accept the defaults and the stack will be installed in:

 

/opt/tomcatstack-7.0.27-0

 

Remember to record your passwords as you'll need them later.  To start and stop the stack use the ./ctlscript command.  The help option will show you how to use the command to start, stop and restart the services.

 

The properties.ini file is a list of all the port numbers and options.  You will probably need to consult this file when it comes time to setup ESS.

 

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