GlassFish Web Stack and other topics Jeff Trawick

Recent updates to mod_fcgid are ready to test.

a quick look at Enterprise Manager with Apache

mod_whatkilledus with GlassFish Web Stack 1.5

Now that GlassFish Web Stack 1.5 is available, I thought I'd give a quick list of improvements to Apache (httpd). I'll cover some of these in more detail in later articles.

First, Apache has been updated to 2.2.11, with later security fixes. So while scheduling prevented delivery of the absolute latest version, Web Stack 1.5 includes all security fixes in the current Apache, APR, and APR-Util releases (2.2.12, 1.3.7, and 1.3.8 respectively).

Additionally,

• The new Web Stack Enterprise Manager provides monitoring support for Apache, in addition to the other server components of Web Stack.
• The new IPS/pkg(5) delivery allows multiple installs of Apache (and the rest of Web Stack) on a system, including non-root installs. (Existing native packages for administrators continue to be supported.)
• LDAP authentication over SSL is now supported on Solaris 10, via OpenLDAP. (It was already supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.)
• Exception hooks are now supported via a change to the configure options. Users now have the option to use diagnostic modules like mod_whatkilledus to capture information at the point of a child process crash.
• mod_sed, a Sun contribution to the next release of Apache, has been backported to the Web Stack Apache 2.2 delivery. mod_sed provides more versatile content filtering relative to mod_substitute.
• mod_security is now provided.

drives me absolutely up the wall!!!

Basically, all I do all day is review slide decks.  Day after day after day.  (The paperclip icon in Thunderbird makes my heart race.)  Anyway, today I'm walking through yet another slide deck when I get to a slide that starts out like this:

Apache Specific Tuning
 ListenBacklog 16384
 ServerLimit 8192
 MaxClients 8192
 MaxRequestsPerChild 0
 StartServers 128
 MinSpareServers 20
 MaxSpareServers 128

There's no further information!  That's the end!  Really!

/dev/tcp is ROTFL thinking about that ListenBacklog directive.  The swapper is looking for some extra volumes.  fork() and kill() and exit() are trying to get a room at the beach for the weekend.

It started to feel like I had held a match in my hand way too long as I started typing a furious response (which I had to delete).  I tried a slightly more tactful approach and had to delete that too.  After walking around the house five or ten times, I came back in and responded with a suggestion that I could cover that material properly at the Web Stack Deep Dive session at CommunityOne West in San Francisco next Wednesday.  He agreed.  Wish me luck!

Earlier today while I was trying to poke holes in the Solaris and Red Hat Enterprise Linux builds of the upcoming GlassFish Web Stack 1.5 release and (hopefully) figuring out how to solve a mod_perl/mod_security2 clash, my wife had lunch with friends and brought back a newly released album from an area jazz band that includes our friend Thomas Taylor.

The album is Stickadiboom by the Steve Haines Quintet + Jimmy Cobb (yes, that Jimmy Cobb). This is quite an impressive work. Steve is a string bass player, and the composer of most of the songs on the album. He has some solos that I am enjoying a great deal; some stretches remind me of the work by Eddie Gomez on Chick Corea's Three Quartets album (alas, this is perhaps because I haven't heard that much memorable, melodic bass).

All these guys are in top form, and everything fits together perfectly.  The band plays really tight on these songs; I expect that this is the nature of the compositions plus a great deal of sweat.  (The songs themselves are quite memorable; I'm sure that other groups will be playing some of these in the future.)  We saw Steve and Thomas with a different group of musicians recently, including a few walk ons; it came together after a fashion, and everyone had fun.  But with this album we get to hear them in a totally different, serious setting.  These are performances to be proud of.

If you like jazz, listen to the samples on the web!

visual guide to setting up AMP on OpenSolaris and Solaris 10 with the GlassFish Web Stack

build Python's LDAP extension on 2009.06

Hello from Amsterdam!  We httpd and APR developers have been busy.

On the APR side, for future APR 2.0, the separate APR-Util package is no more (its features were folded into APR proper) and APR pools now use malloc (similar to old pool debug mode).  The use of malloc can result in better performance with modern heap libraries (this needs analysis!), and watchmalloc/libumem/ElectricFence/etc. can be used with APR apps much more effectively.  (Joe quickly found a longstanding bug in one of the sample apps by linking with ElectricFence.)

An httpd change of great interest to me is the ability to load MPMs as DSOs via the LoadModule directive.

Traditionally you select an MPM on Unix with a configure-time option such as --with-mpm=prefork, --with-mpm=worker, etc.  If you want to have multiple MPMs available you build the complete server for every MPM and switch out httpd executable files to change that.  You can still do that, but now you can also specify --with-mpm=shared on the configure invocation, build the MPMs you want (via apxs right now :( ), and load the desired MPM with LoadModule.

Here is a sample apxs invocation to build the "Simple" MPM.  prefork, worker, and event are similar:

$ cd server/mpm/simple

$ ~/inst/23/bin/apxs -ci -o mod_mpm_simple.la -n mpm_simple_module \

simple_api.c simple_children.c simple_core.c simple_event.c \

simple_io.c simple_run.c

Now add something like this to httpd.conf:

<IfDefine WORKER>

loadmodule mpm_worker_module modules/mod_mpm_worker.so

</IfDefine>

<IfDefine EVENT>

loadmodule mpm_event_module modules/mod_mpm_event.so

</IfDefine>

<IfDefine SIMPLE>

loadmodule mpm_simple_module modules/mod_mpm_simple.so

</IfDefine>

<IfDefine !WORKER>

<IfDefine !EVENT>

<IfDefine !SIMPLE>

<IfModule !prefork.c>

loadmodule mpm_prefork_module modules/mod_mpm_prefork.so

</IfModule>

</IfDefine>

</IfDefine>

</IfDefine>

Start with

$ apachectl -k start -DEVENT (or -DWORKER or -DSIMPLE)

It defaults to prefork if you omit the -Dmpmname parameter.

If the install forms work but you get the error "PHP does not have MySQL support enabled.", install SUNWphp52-mysql and restart Apache.

$ pfexec pkg install SUNWphp52-mysql

$ svcadm restart apache22

hello, world using CGI.pm, run by mod_perl

Apache HTTP Server and mod_disk_cache can be used to cache dynamic content, and reduce load on web applications to improve server performance and user response time.

Starting today, Sun Web Stack is the GlassFish Web Stack, so we get to use the fish graphics too.

(Oh, and we no longer have to say "very soon" to queries about Sun Web Stack support offerings.  See the new GlassFish Portfolio site.)