Chapter 03: Installing GlassFish

Overview

The GlassFish Application Server is installed by simply downloading a zip file and uncompressing it. The server is able to host multiple domains so we need to choose a domain name for our ICAT installation. In this tutorial, we will use the domain name localhost. The files for the domain are stored under glassfish/<domain_name>, in our case glassfish/localhost, under the top level GlassFish directory.

Download and unzip GlassFish

wget http://download.java.net/glassfish/4.0/release/glassfish-4.0.zip
unzip glassfish-4.0.zip

Configure GlassFish

Add the GlassFish directory to the path so we have access to the asadmin program which is used to administer the GlassFish application server. This step must be completed before running the script below as it uses the asadmin program.

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/glassfish4/bin' >> $HOME/.bashrc
source $HOME/.bashrc

Download a script to set up GlassFish for ICAT

wget https://icatproject.org/misc/scripts/setup-glassfish.py

Run the setup script. We pass it 3 options: the hostname, the maximum amount of memory to use and the password for the root account of the MySQL database. So for a domain name of localhost, with a maximum memory usage of 75% and a root MySQL account password of 'pw', run:

python setup-glassfish.py localhost 75% pw

Configure GlassFish for MySQL

We need the MySQL Connector library to enable ICAT to access the MySQL database. This was installed to the system in the previous chapter. We need to copy the jar file to the correct directory - the localhost domain of the GlassFish server - then restart GlassFish so that it is found.

cp /usr/share/java/mysql-connector-java-5.1.17.jar $HOME/glassfish4/glassfish/domains/localhost/lib/ext/
asadmin stop-domain localhost
asadmin start-domain localhost

N.B. Note the last 2 commands which restart GlassFish. It is often helpful to restart GlassFish when troubleshooting a problem with the software or installation process.