JamesBranam's Blog

AWS Experience Part 3: Trying Another Instance

Hi all,

Hmmmm...

I switched on my machine this morning thinking a new day will bring new results. Nope. Same old results. As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, I created a server instance using Fedora with LAMP, complete with MySQL. Hmmm.. Sound good? Well, it comes with MySQL 4.1. Normally an update would be a straightforward process. Since Fedora 8 doesn't come with an

apt-get

command, I chose to go the

yum

route. I tried

 yum update mysql-server

. No dice. problems. I spent another 30 minutes or so, trying to correct the problem, but to no avail. So I decided to create a whole new server instance with Fedora 8 and no MySQL. I manually installed MySQL on the machine, by doing the following:

• I download the MySQL sever, cient, and headers and libraries from the MySQL.com.

  wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/MySQL-server-community-5.1.34-0.rhel3.i386.rpm/from/http://mysql.linux.cz/
  wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/MySQL-client-community-5.1.34-0.rhel3.i386.rpm/from/http://mysql.linux.cz/
  wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/MySQL-devel-community-5.1.34-0.rhel3.i386.rpm/from/http://mysql.linux.cz/

• I installed MySQL using rpm. For example:

  rpm -i http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/MySQL-devel-community-5.1.34-0.rhel3.i386.rpm/from/http://mysql.linux.cz/
  I set the root password: 
  /usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'mypw'
  

MySQL worked perfectly. I created a database and messed around with it for a few minutes. No problems.

Now there were other issues to take care of. I needed to install a JDK and ant. And while I was at it, I went ahead and downloaded GlassFish. Just getting ready.

I made sure I set my JAVA_HOME again, and made sure it was on the path. I also set my ANT_HOME and made sure it was on the path. I'll worry about getting Glassfish functioning soon.

Major Obstacles

This has been one huge learning experience for me. I've encountered a lot of obstacles, and here is a short list:

• Creating an AWS account in itself is not so easy. You have to know some basic things before you even go there. For example: EBS, EC2, ES, etc, and why you would need them.
• I got the impression that AWS tries to push you toward their SimpleDB. There is little support for MySQL. There is one tutorial that causes more problems than anything else.
• Instructions in tutorials are written for the Linux user...for the Debian Linux user. Albeit, there are a lot of similarities among brands of Linux, but there are just enough differences to screw things up. This is an especially frustrating point in that AWS offers you types of servers for starting up: Fedora and Windows. But the instructions are for Debian. Hmmm. Go figure. Doesn't make much sense to me. As an AWS beginner I'm pushed toward Fedora, and end up pulling out my hair while googling for Fedora equivalents of Debian commands.
• There is a little drop down list in the upper left-hand corner of the AWS Management Console. Even though I registered with my European address, used a European credit card, I was denied access to the US-East region. Not that I wanted access to that region, but this is the default setting. So, after several failed attempts at launching a server instance, I figured it out. I had to manually change it to the EU-West setting.
• AWS documentation is not very good. Granted, it's only my opinion, but I write documentation for a living and I know bad documentation when I see it. It leaves you guessing too much. Why don't they just remove all the content from the documentation and replace each instance of document with one line: Google it yourself!
• Nobody likes old versions of software (except for Windows XP maybe), so why feature MySQL 4.1 on one of your AMIs, when MySQL 5 has been out for a while now.
• The only way to get access to other AMIs is in the Community AMIs tab. I haven't played around with this yet, but I did try to find an Open Solaris AMI. Open Solaris is listed as a choice in the drop down menu, but there are no AMIs listed. I don't blame AWS for this though, since it falls under Community. I hope this changes with time.

That's it for today.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 03:58PM May 14, 2009 by branajam in NetBeans  |  Comments[2]