[Note: this message contains an attached text file.] Red Hat is pleased to announce the general availability of Red Hat Application Server v1.0 Beta 1. This is a public beta. Please feel free to forward this announcement to anyone within or outside your organization who may be interested in testing this beta release. Red Hat Application Server is a key component of Red Hat's Open Source Architecture, a road map for the open source technologies and capabilities Red Hat and its partners will be building in the future -- spanning the operating system, middleware, applications, and management tools. Red Hat Application Server includes: - Tomcat 4.1.27, the official Reference Implementation of the Java Servlet 2.3 and JavaServer Pages 1.2 technologies. - Struts 1.0.2, a framework for building web applications with Java. - JOnAS 3.3, ObjectWeb's J2EE implementation, with web-based administration. - Sample JOnAS and Struts web applications. - Supporting modules for file uploads, AJP and WARP protocols, and JDBC drivers for MySQL. You can find a complete package list for Red Hat Application Server v1.0 Beta 1 at: http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/beta/taroon/en/RHAPS/i386/RedHat/RPMS/ This announcement includes details on obtaining the beta software, reporting bugs, and communicating with Red Hat and other testers via mailing lists during the beta period. Red Hat Application Server v1.0 Beta 1 is available for testing on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 for the following architectures: - x86 (i686/Athlon) - ia64 (Intel Itanium2) - x86_64 (AMD64) - ppc (IBM iSeries and pSeries) A copy of the release notes for this beta software is attached to this message. Current features, packages, and naming are subject to change before the final release. The Red Hat Application Server development team would like to encourage you to test this release in non-production environments and provide feedback via the mechanisms described below. This is pre-release quality code, and Red Hat makes no guarantees as to performance, stability, or compatibility across beta releases. Please run this in non-production environments only. Red Hat will not support upgrades from one beta release to another, nor from beta to official released products. Red Hat Application Server v1.0 Beta 1 is available for download via FTP and Red Hat Network. PostgreSQL server, recommended for use with JOnAS in this beta release, is available in the 'Extras' channel for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 on Red Hat Network. FTP Availability ---------------- Installable binary ISO images for use with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (RHEL3-RHAPS-beta1-*.iso), are available for each architecture at: http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/beta/taroon/en/iso/ Binary and source RPM packages are available at: http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/beta/taroon/en/RHAPS/ They may also be available from Red Hat FTP mirror sites. Red Hat Network Availability and Updates ---------------------------------------- Binary and source RPM packages, and installable binary and source ISO images for Red Hat Application Server v1.0 Beta 1 are available via Red Hat Network to all Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers with current subscriptions at: https://rhn.redhat.com/network/software/all_channels.pxt During the beta period, we may also supply updated packages on Red Hat Network. While these updates are not subjected to as much system testing as our release milestones, they enable you to immediately test against more recent package builds that may resolve bugs and issues, rather than requiring you to wait until the next full milestone release. Help on installing packages using Red Hat Network is available at: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/RHNetwork/ref-guide/2.8/sm-channels-packages.html Help on using the up2date tool is available at: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/RHNetwork/ref-guide/2.8/up2date-setup.html General help on using Red Hat Network is available at: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/RHNetwork/ref-guide/ Bug Reporting ------------- To ensure accurate tracking and follow-up, all bugs should be reported using Bugzilla at: http://bugzilla.redhat.com We have created a public release category 'Red Hat Application Server Public Beta' for this early access program. Please use version "1.0-beta1" as the version for all bugs filed against this milestone release. Mailing Lists ------------- Red Hat has created a public mailing list for general discussion of the Red Hat Application Server v1.0 Beta releases. To subscribe to rhaps-beta-list, send mail to: rhaps-beta-list-request@redhat.com with subscribe in the subject line. You can leave the body empty. Or see: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/rhaps-beta-list/ Thanks for your interest in testing Red Hat Application Server v1.0 Beta 1! Sincerely, The Red Hat Application Server Team
Red Hat Application Server - notes for the beta release This beta release includes several software packages intended for installation on top of a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 U1 system. These packages include Tomcat, for running Servlet/JSP web applications, and JoNAS, for running J2EE-based web applications. These are discussed separately below. * Tomcat This version of Tomcat and its dependencies have been compiled to native code using the GNU gcj compiler, specifically the gcj-ssa technology preview package included in RHEL3. This means that no JVM is required to run the programs. Tomcat can be started, stopped, and configured to start automatically, either from the command line (using the commands 'service tomcat [start|stop|restart]' and 'chkconfig tomcat [on|off]') or from within the Red Hat Service Configuration Tool (from the main menu, select System Settings -> Server Settings -> Services). It is possible to run multiple Tomcat servers on the same machine, as detailed in /usr/share/doc/tomcat-4.1.27/README.multiple. Tomcat is configured to use the AJP 1.3 connector module mod_jk2 by default. After installing and starting the Tomcat server, you may need to restart httpd in order for it to load mod_jk2. Once this is done, you should be able to browse the example web application by pointing your browser at the http://localhost/examples/ page. Tomcat uses the following files and directories: /etc/tomcat/server.xml -- Main configuration file. Edit this if you need to add or modify connectors and realms. /etc/tomcat/tomcat-users.xml -- User database file. Edit this to add or modify users and roles if you are using the UserDatabase realm (the default). /etc/sysconfig/tomcat -- Red Hat specific configuration settings. /var/lib/tomcat/ -- Directory from which web applications are loaded. /etc/logrotate.d/tomcat -- Log rotation configuration settings. You will not normally need to edit this. /var/log/tomcat/ -- Directory in which logfiles are written. /usr/share/tomcat/common/ /usr/share/tomcat/server/ /usr/share/tomcat/shared/ -- Directories into which classfiles and jars can be placed to make them available either to all webapps (shared), to the server only (server), or to both the server and all webapps (common). mod_jk2 uses the following file: /etc/httpd/conf/workers2.properties -- Main configuration file. Edit this to add or modify mappings from the webserver to the servlet container. Most server configuration and webapp management tasks can be performed with the admin and manager web applications respectively. To enable them, you must do the following: 1) Add either or both of the following mappings to mod_jk2's configuration file /etc/httpd/conf/workers2.properties and restart httpd. [uri:/admin/*] info=Map the Administration web application [uri:/manager/*] info=Map the Manager web application 2) Add a user with the admin and/or manager roles (as required) to Tomcat's user database file /etc/tomcat/tomcat-users.xml and restart tomcat. <user name="whatever" password="PaSsW0Rd" roles="admin,manager"/> 3) Point your browser at either http://localhost/admin/ (for the admin webapp) or http://localhost/manager/html (for the manager webapp). Note that the Tomcat server runs under the tomcat user, which by default cannot write to either the configuration or the webapps directories (this limits the damage that a compromised web application could do). If you wish to use the manager web application fully or the admin web application at all, you must either set the ownership and permissions of the relevant directories yourself or set the relevant options in /etc/sysconfig/tomcat and restart tomcat. * Jonas This version of ObjectWeb JOnAS relies on an installed JVM, such as those by Sun, IBM, or BEA. (Unlike tomcat which is gcj-compiled, jonas runs in JVM-interpreted mode.) Being a typical J2EE application server, jonas relies on a relational database backend. This package requires that the rh-postgresql server be installed, but creates a separate database instance to serve only jonas. This new database instance is configured to start and stop automatically with jonas, puts its data files under /var/lib/jonas/pgsql, and listens to localhost on TCP port 5433. This way it does not interfere with any existing postgresql databases on the server. In jonas, it is already configured as the "jdbc_1" datasource in JNDI. The entire jonas suite runs under a new "jonas" system user. You can activate the server using "/sbin/service jonas start" as is typical of a network service. It is configured with its internal servlet engine to listen for HTTP traffic on port 8080. Visit http://localhost:8080/ after installation and jonas startup to administer and interact with jonas. The jonas-examples package includes some sample web applications. A few of these are compiled and ready for deployment (to make them accessible to remote web users). You can use the jonas administrative web interface (http://.../jonasAdmin/, "Deployments" frames). After deployment, you can interact with these samples using the appropriate web URL prefix. Other examples require you to download some source code from the internet. See /var/lib/jonas/examples. To build or manage jonas applications using the command line, you need to set a variety of environment variables: JAVA_HOME=`cat /etc/sysconfig/java` JONAS_ROOT=/var/lib/jonas PATH=${PATH}:${JAVA_HOME}/bin:${JONAS_ROOT}/bin/unix If necessary, use "classic-ant" as the compilation driver instead of "ant", because the latter is gcj-compiled on RHEL3 and is not suitable for jonas. It may be necessary to use the "su jonas" system command to deposit .ear/.war/.jar files under jonas installation tree, due to file system permissions. More general documentation on use of, and programming with, jonas is available under /usr/share/doc/jonas-3.3, including a printable PDF.
