Installation Tips

Back to General Installation.

A server with Tomcat and a Java servlet can be a tricky thing to setup.
If you are not experienced with these things please contact us for help!
By all means have a go if you are keen but contact us well BEFORE severe hair loss occurs ;-)
We would rather help than have you give up and miss out on a great application.

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-java5, 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-java5-jdk
  

• Install tomcat:

  aptitude install tomcat5.5
  

• Install mysql:

  aptitude install mysql-server
  

Tomcat

• In Debian add/adjust the following lines in /etc/default/tomcat5.5:
  • JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/
  • JAVA_OPTS="-Djava.awt.headless=true -Xmx256M"
  • TOMCAT5_SECURITY=no
• 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
  • As always the more memory the better but gnuMims is known to run at this setting and perhaps even lower.

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 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:

    Alias /gnuMims /var/lib/tomcat5.5/webapps/gnuMims
    <Directory /var/lib/tomcat5.5/webapps/gnuMims/>
        Options FollowSymLinks Indexes MultiViews
        AllowOverride None
        order allow,deny
        allow from all
    </Directory>
    
    JkMount /gnuMims/* ajp13_worker
    

  • 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=/var/lib/tomcat5.5
    workers.java_home=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun
    

  • 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, MySQL:3306.

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