Installation Tips

Back to General Installation.

Debian GNU/Linux

We highly recommend using Debian stable as the host operating system.
It is a free, stable, powerful and very widely used operating system for servers.
All our testing and configuration is done against Debian servers.

• Install sun-java-6, be sure that no gcj (GNU java) packages are installed:

  dpkg --get-selections |grep gcj
  

  Note: The above search command must return NO packages.

  aptitude install sun-java6-jdk
  

• Install tomcat:

  aptitude install tomcat6
  

• Install mysql:

  aptitude install mysql-server
  

Tomcat

• In Debian add/adjust the following lines in /etc/default/tomcat6:
  • JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun
  • JAVA_OPTS="-Djava.awt.headless=true -Xms256m -Xmx256M -XX:PermSize=80m -XX:MaxPermSize=80m -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC"
  • As always the more memory the better but gnuMims is known to run on the demo at this setting.

Only Debian Lenny (old stable):

• To work around a java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError in Debian Lenny run the following commands:
  • i386: ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/lib/i386/libmlib_image.so /usr/lib
  • amd64: ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/lib/amd64/libmlib_image.so /usr/lib
  • both: ldconfig
• Note:
  • The above security settings should not be used in production, see ​http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/security-manager-howto.html

Memory Tips

• GnuMims has been known to load and run on a 300Mhz laptop with <180MB total RAM but would not be very usable.
• A Debian GNU/Linux machine with at least 1GB RAM and P4 equivalent processor is recommended.
• For a Windows 2003 server directly running tomcat you may need more than 2G of RAM (that's why we recommend a dedicated Debian GNU/Linux)
• A vmware virtual appliance (GNU/Linux + Tomcat + Mysql) with 1G of RAM should work ok on a Windows 2003 server if you must run Windows.

Apache2 Setup Tips

• It is common (but not required) to have Tomcat run through Apache.
  • This is an apache example config using libapache2-mod-jk:

    JkMount /gnuMims/* ajp13_worker
    
    <VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin contact@example.com
        ServerName gnumims.example.com
    
        #Requests for "/" and "/gnuMims" are redirected to "/gnuMims/"
        #[R] is an external redirect so the url is passed back to the browser.
        RewriteEngine  on
        RewriteRule    ^/$              /gnuMims/       [L,R]
        RewriteRule    ^/gnuMims$       /gnuMims/       [L,R]
    
       JkMount /gnuMims/* ajp13_worker
    
    </VirtualHost>
    

  • To enable libapache2-mod-jk in Debian set these lines in /etc/apache2/mods-available/jk.conf:

    JkWorkersFile   /etc/libapache2-mod-jk/workers.properties
    JkLogFile       /var/log/apache2/mod_jk.log
    JkLogLevel      info
    JkMount /*.jsp ajp13_worker
    JkMount /*/servlet/ ajp13_worker
    

  • To configure mod-jk in Debian double check these lines in /etc/libapache2-mod-jk/workers.properties:

    workers.tomcat_home=/usr/share/tomcat6
    workers.java_home=/usr/lib/jvm/default-java
    

  • Then run:
    • a2enmod jk
    • /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

MySQL Tips

• In Debian MySQL only listens on 127.0.0.1 out of the box.
• ONLY if you need to access mysql from outside, then comment this line out in /etc/mysql/my.cnf:
  • #bind-address = 127.0.0.1

Firewall Tips

• Every server must have a firewall, we use shorewall firewall.
• Ports of interest - http:80, https:443, Tomcat(Debian):8180 or 8080, MySQL:3306.

One again, please contact us if any of this does not work for you.