Tuesday May 16, 2006

Sun Java System Web Server 7 Tech Preview
As part of our ongoing performance work we have been running the development builds of the Sun Java System Web Server 7 for quite some time (this work ties into what I previously termed as the Buzzword Bingo area of Suns Performance Lifestyle). Web Server 7 has just been released as a technology preview, you can download it here, as also mentioned by Chris Elving, Joe McCabe and other members of the Web Server development team.

From the work that I have done with Web Server 7 over the last few months I have to admit that I have become a big fan of this version, its got some really nice features, particuarly in terms of admininstration, in my case the stand out administration feature is the command line interface wadm, and its massively, massively scaleable. However in terms of our benchmarking work the first step for us is to ensure that we can install the webserver automatically when we get a new build, so here as an example of a silent installation of Web Server 7.

The example here is on my laptop, running the latest Solaris Express. I will assume that you have an unarchived version of the webserver to start with, and go from there.

Create a statefile, you can use this as a template if you wish, in my case the statefile is the following

[STATE_BEGIN Sun Java System Web Server c618c83b4cca71e43586cdace6e02487c986543d]
defaultInstallDirectory = /sun/webserver7
currentInstallDirectory = /opt/SUNWwbsvr7
UPGRADE = false
SELECTED_COMPONENTS = svrcore,admincli,devsupport
USE_BUNDLED_JDK = FALSE
JDK_LOCATION = /usr/java
CONFIGURE_ADMIN_AS = Server
STARTUP_ONBOOT = false
ADMIN_HOST = prometheus
ADMIN_SSL_PORT = 8989
ADMIN_PORT =
ADMIN_UID = root
ADMIN_NAME = admin
ADMIN_PASSWD = changeme
AGENT_HOST =
AGENT_SSL_PORT =
REGISTER_ADMIN_AGENT =
WEB_SERVERNAME = prometheus
WEB_PORT = 80
WEB_UID = webservd
WEB_DOCROOT =
SIXTYFOURBIT_INSTALL = false
CONFIG_NAME = prometheus
[STATE_DONE Sun Java System Web Server c618c83b4cca71e43586cdace6e02487c986543d]

This statefile installs the webserver, adminstration server and sample applications, using the already installed jvm, and setups the admininstration server as a server rather than agent instance. You may need to generate a different id string for your machine, if so, assuming your template is saved as say /tmp/template you could do something like the following

#!/bin/sh

ID=`./setup --id`
ID_STR=`grep STATE_BEGIN /tmp/template | awk '{print $7}' | sed -e "s/]//"`
sed -e "s/$ID_STR/$ID/g" < /tmp/template > /tmp/ws7inst.txt

And thats pretty much it, to do your install just run the setup program....

# ./setup --silent /tmp/ws7inst.txt

Installation Successful.

Next Steps:

1. Start the Administration Server by executing:

/opt/SUNWwbsvr7/admin-server/bin/startserv

2. You can access the Web Admin Server by accessing the following URL:

https://prometheus:8989

3. Refer to the installation log file at
/opt/SUNWwbsvr7/setup/Sun_Java_System_Web_Server_install.log for more details.

Tuesday November 08, 2005

Directory Server 5.2 with less than 2Gb Entry Cache
Part two of my notes on the 2005Q4 release of the Java Enterprise System. This one is not so much of a workaround, more of an information piece. The Directory Server folks have been hard at work further increasing the performance of the Directory Server, and one of these improvements was a change in the way the entry cache is calculated. A side effect of this is that for rigs with an entry cache of less than 2Gbs you could encounter a performance degradation.

The workaround for this is very simple, just set the environment variable SUN_SUPPORT_SLAPD_DEFPOOL=true and restart your directory server. i.e for an ldap deployment called ds,

# cd /var/opt/mps/serverroot/slapd-ds
# SUN_SUPPORT_SLAPD_DEFPOOL=true; export SUN_SUPPORT_SLAPD_DEFPOOL
# ./start-slapd

Communications Express in Webserver Container Bug Work Arounds
The 2005Q4 release of the Java Enterprise System has come out, so I guess its time to share a few workarounds for some potential problems that you may see. First up is a product that we are working on with some of our colleagues in various parts of Sun, Communications Express. Two seperate gotcha type issues here, one of which is in the release notes, the other was hit at the end of the release cycle.

Firstly let us describe the communications express component (communications express is also referred to as UWC, which is what I will call it for the rest of this post) of the scenario that we have deployed. This deployment is relatively straight forward, with a Directory Server tier, an Access Manager tier deployed in an Application Server Web Container then Messaging Server and UWC on the same tier, with UWC deployed in a Webserver web container, and using the Access Manager SDK. Graphically this looks like.

The first issue is very straight forward, and is documented in the UWC release notes as bugid 6283991 (Java Exception on Web Server Startup after Configuration of Communications Express). This issue will manifest itself as a failure during the startup of your webserver with a stacktrace similar too

info: WEB0100: Loading web module in virtual server [ms.jestest.sun.com] at [/search]
failure: WebModule[/uwc]: WEB2680: Exception starting filter IdentitySSOAuthFilter
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/iplanet/am/sdk/AMException
        at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredConstructors0(Native Method)
        at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredConstructors(Class.java:2328)
        at java.lang.Class.getConstructor0(Class.java:2640)
        at java.lang.Class.newInstance0(Class.java:321)
        at java.lang.Class.newInstance(Class.java:303)

[ split accross lines for readability ]

/opt/SUNWam/lib:/opt/SUNWam/locale:/etc/opt/SUNWam/config:
/opt/SUNWam/lib/am_sdk.jar:/opt/SUNWam/lib/am_services.jar:
/opt/SUNWam/lib/am_logging.jar

info: CORE3282: stdout: AdminUtils: Could not initialize admin  info message: Got LDAPServiceException code=19
info: CORE3282: stdout: 10/04/2005 02:32:46:381 PM BST: Thread[Thread-1,5,main]
info: CORE3282: stdout: Crypt.static{}: Encryptor class= com.iplanet.services.util.JSSEncryption
warning: CORE3283: stderr: Failed to create debug directory
info: CORE3282: stdout: 10/04/2005 02:32:46:419 PM BST: Thread[Thread-1,5,main]
info: CORE3282: stdout: Intilize CryptoManager in JSSEncryption.java
info: CORE3282: stdout: 10/04/2005 02:32:46:427 PM BST: Thread[Thread-1,5,main]
info: CORE3282: stdout: ocspCheck value in JSSEncryption : false
info: CORE3282: stdout: 10/04/2005 02:32:46:574 PM BST: Thread[Thread-1,5,main]
info: CORE3282: stdout: Crypt.static{}: Encryptor class= com.iplanet.services.util.JSSEncryption
info: CORE3282: stdout: 10/04/2005 02:32:46:579 PM BST: Thread[Thread-1,5,main]
info: CORE3282: stdout: Crypt.static{}: Encryptor class= com.iplanet.services.util.JSSEncryption
warning: CORE3283: stderr: Exception in thread "Thread-1" java.lang.NullPointerException
warning: CORE3283: stderr:      at java.lang.String.(String.java:479)
warning: CORE3283: stderr:      at com.sun.identity.security.AdminPasswordAction.run(AdminPasswordAction.java:86)
warning: CORE3283: stderr:      at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
warning: CORE3283: stderr:      at com.sun.identity.authentication.internal.server.SMSAuthModule.initialize(SMSAuthModule.java:131)
warning: CORE3283: stderr:      at com.sun.identity.authentication.internal.LoginContext.login(LoginContext.java:122)
warning: CORE3283: stderr:      at com.sun.identity.authentication.internal.AuthLoginThread.run(AuthLoginThread.java:82)
info: CORE3282: stdout: 10/04/2005 02:32:46:587 PM BST: Thread[main,5,main]
info: CORE3282: stdout: AuthContext::getInformationRequired() returned from waiting for Callback array
info: CORE3282: stdout: 10/04/2005 02:32:46:587 PM BST: Thread[main,5,main]
info: CORE3282: stdout: AuthContext::getLoginStatus()
info: CORE3282: stdout: 10/04/2005 02:32:46:588 PM BST: Thread[main,5,main]
info: CORE3282: stdout: AuthContext::getInformationRequired() waiting for Callback array
info: CORE3282: stdout: 10/04/2005 02:32:46:588 PM BST: Thread[main,5,main]
info: CORE3282: stdout: AuthContext::getLoginStatus()