Sriram Natarajan's Weblog: Do more with Web Server

Now that GlassFish Web Stack 1.5 release is finally available for download, check out the highlight of this release - Enterprise Manager

Web Stack Enterprise Manager within Web Stack 1.5 offers the following benefits :

•  Ability to start / stop / restart open source web tier components within Web Stack like Apache HTTP Server, Tomcat, MySQL 5.0/5.1, Squid, Lighttpd.
  
• Ability to lay out monitoring statistics of all these components in graph form. You also move back in time within these graphs allowing you to understand the patten of your load etc.
  

Web Stack Enterprise Manager, unlike the rest of the Sun GlassFish Web Stack 1.5 release , comes with a 30 day evaluation license. You will need to call Sun and buy support for using it post evaluation period. Hey , gotta make money some where..

However, rest of the GlassFish Web Stack 1.5 release is free to download and use (even for your production needs). We hope, you will consider Sun for your production support requirements.  If you have any issues with using Web Stack, please post your issues to our Forum - where some of the developers lurk and will be happy to guide you.

PHP runtime within OpenSolaris includes performance booster extensions like APC (PHP extension to cache the compiled PHP script) and Memcache (PHP extension to integrate with Memcached server) to deliver the best performance, out of the box,  for production environment. Now, with upcoming release of OpenSolaris 2009.06 (more specifically with Indiana build 111 or above), we have also have made it easy to check out the performance statistics of these extensions which should further help you in getting the maximum juice from your system.

Installing OpenSolaris 2009.06 (preview build)

If you haven't tried OpenSolaris distribution yet, you can pick up the latest OpenSolaris 2009.06 (preview build) ISO image from here. and steps to install AMP (Apache, PHP and MySQL) stack within OpenSolaris is covered in my earlier blog .

Assuming, you have got a working AMP stack on your system and an application like Joomla, Drupal, or MediaWiki working fine , then here is what you need to do to display the performance statistics of these extensions to your browser :

For displaying PHP APC statistics to the browser: sriramn@sriramn:~> pfexec cp /etc/apache2/2.2/samples-conf.d/php-apc-stats.conf /etc/apache2/2.2/conf.d/ sriramn@sriramn:~> pfexec cp /etc/apache2/2.2/samples-conf.d/php-memcache-stats.conf /etc/apache2/2.2/conf.d/ sriramn@sriramn:~> svcadm restart http:apache22

Now, you should be able to access these statistics of APC and Memcache extensions by going to the http://localhost/stats/apc/ or http://localhost/stats/memcache/  respectively.

Tuning PHP APC

Once configured, APC statistics page , for example, would show this below page. 

This page should provide you with information as to how many PHP pages are cached and if the cache is getting missed etc. If you see frequent APC cache misses etc then you will need to appropriately increase APC shared memory size. You could do this and other APC configuration tuning by visiting PHP APC configuration page .

If you run into any issues, you could always write to us visiting at this link or by visiting our forum.

After a long time since my initial post on releasing the OpenSolaris based AMP stack for Amazon EC, Today, we announced the availability of Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for OpenSolaris 2008.11 based AMP (Apache 2.2, MySQL 5.0 and PHP 5.2) on Amazon EC2 envionment. So, if you want to try out Amazon based web services running on enterprise grade OpenSolaris, please check out this announcement for more information.

Earlier, I wrote this blog on how to use PECL extensions within OpenSolaris. Now, there will be some scenario where in a simple pecl install <extension name> might not work because of how the script might have been written or what external dependencies like it depends etc.

For example, if you wanted to get mailparse PECL extension working within opensolaris, you would obviously try the following command first

pfexec /usr/php/bin/pecl install mailparse

and would probably be scratching your head when you run into the below error ...

bash-3.2# /usr/php/bin/pecl install mailparse downloading mailparse-2.1.4.tar ...                                                                                                                                                                                                          Starting to download mailparse-2.1.4.tar (Unknown size) ........................................done: 188,416 bytes                                                                                                                                                                                  9 source files, building running: phpize                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Configuring for: PHP Api Version:         20041225                                                                                                                                                                                                            Zend Module Api No:      20060613 Zend Extension Api No:   220060519                                                                                                                                                                                                           building in /var/tmp/pear-build-defaultuser/mailparse-2.1.4 ... checking for re2c... no configure: WARNING: You will need re2c 0.13.4 or later if you want to regenerate PHP parsers.

What the above error means that while PECL framework trying to build the mailparse extension , it is looking for a tool known as 're2c' (which is internally used by PHP). Unfortunately, this tool has not yet made its ways into OpenSolaris yet. I am pretty sure, this tool will soon make its way into OpenSolaris repository as well..

Okay, in these scenario, here is another quickie to get things going for you...

• Within your OpenSolaris machine, manually download mailparse extension from PECL repository
  
• run /usr/php/bin/phpize , followed by configure and build command.
  

[sriramn@sriramn]'~'>gunzip -c mailparse-1.1.4.tar.gz | tar xvfp - [sriramn@sriramn]'~'> cd mailparse-1.1.4 [sriramn@sriramn]'~'>/usr/php/bin/phpize [sriramn@sriramn]'~'>./configure --with-php-config=/usr/php/bin/php-config && gmake && gmake install

Now, mailparse extension should be available under /var/php/5.2/modules directory. If you would like to include any mailparse specific extension, you will need to define them within /etc/php/5.2/php.ini

Af course, for Apache/PHP module to load these new extensions, you will need to restart Apache/PHP server by doing some thing like.. I am sure, you know this already blogs.sun.com/images/smileys/smile.gif" class="smiley" alt=":-)" title=":-)" />

svcadm restart http:apache22

Is it just me wondering as to why 'same sex marriage' issue is highlighted only on an election year and conveniently forgotten afterwards. We saw the same issue play it over during the last soap opera -  America Votes 2004 and we are seeing a season repeat with America Votes 2008. I wish, we as American - take this away from the hands of Politicians and decide for ourselves , as a society, on where we stand.

Statutory Signature : Any opinions , thoughts expressed herewith is my personal opinion and has nothing to do with my employer. 

Ran into this interesting presentation on DTrace from Brendan Gregg. I guess, for folks like myself, with no patience to read through the entire DTrace docs , this presentation might  be very useful .

One cannot promote Firefox brand any better. Ran into these images and felt like sharing it with rest of the Sun community (I am not sure of its authenicity though) Check this out... 
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Some of us in the Web Server team were quite busy with meeting existing and potential customers during Java ONE'2006. Some of my colleagues had excellent demos to showcase the the cool stuffs that one can do with our Web Server 7 Technology Preview release. For example, we had demos in the following areas: - How to use Sun Java System Web Server with Netbeans using Web Server Netbeans Plugin One can use this plugin, to develop and debug either J2EE1.4 based Web Applications or Web Services using JAX 2.0 technologies. - How to easilty setup Roller web application using Web Server 7 - How to easily setup Clusters and Session Replication using Web Server 7 - How to take advantage of the rich Web Server 7 Admin CLI features and easily administer (even remotely) Though, I have not personally contributed much to any of these demos, it was a great experience even learning to use these demos. Hopefully, my peers would post their demos for every one who couldn't personally attend Java ONE'2006. I will provide a cross reference to this URL as soon as I know them. Some of the other interesting things, that I would like to take away from Java ONE'2006 event is - Lot of customers though still using Apache were very much interested in having a competition and they were very much interested in our product. - Lot of customer (almost all of them) didn't really know that Web Server 7 is free (like Apache) and free means good to every one. - Almost every one who saw our demo wanted to know when the final version is going to be released. - Web Server 7 is a Technology Preview release and we all want your feedback to improvde this release. We know that there are still bugs (that is why this a Technology Preview and not final release). It was sure a nice break from work being at Java ONE'2006

I work for Sun Microsystems and more particularly with Sun's Web Server team. These days they are commercially known as Sun Java System Web Server. This team has been around for quite a while under other popular name's like Sun ONE Web Server, IPlanet Web Server, Netscape Enterprise Server.

I relocated to Bay Area from Seattle, to be part of Web Server 7 release. During the development of Web Server 7, I got a chance to work with lot of smart and dedicated minds. This team is truly amazing and I enjoy working with them. Before Web Server 7, I have also briefly worked in different roles for Sun Java System Web Server 6.1's release. Working with this team has taught me as to why employers look for experience before hiring !.

Before Web Server, I was also involved with Sun's another successful product known as Sun Java System ASP Server. Again, also known as Sun ONE ASP Server and Chili!ASP Server from Chili!Soft. Yup, I know - Sun likes to meddle with its product names every once in a while.

I have been happily married for the last 3 years and I constantly struggle to adjust my work with personal life. I guess, I still have a lot to learn in my life.

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