Adding the Tomcat Virtual Platform to a gHN

Installation

The Tomcat Virtual Platform can be deployed on a gHN by uncompressing the related archive inside the $GLOBUS_LOCATION//virtual-platforms folder:

tar -zxvf org.gcube.vre-management.virtualplatform-tomcat-X.tar.gz

This will create a $GLOBUS_LOCATION//virtual-platforms/Tomcat6 folder with the resources needed to enable the Tomcat 6 platform. Afterwards, the tar.gz archive and the doc folder (also created by the command above) should be removed.

gHN Configuration

Download, install and configure a Tomcat 6.0.X instance (tests have been made with version 6.0.32).

Then next step is to add a user with the privileges needed to perform deployments on the instance. This is done by adding the following lines to the $CATALINA_HOME/conf/tomcat-users.xml file:

<tomcat-users>
 
 <!-- other config settings -->
 
 <role rolename="manager-gui"/>
 <role rolename="manager"/>
 <role rolename="manager-script"/>
 <user username="USERNAME" password="PASSWORD" roles="manager-gui,manager,manager-script"/>
</tomcat-users>

where USERNAME and PASSWORD are chosen by the Site Manager.

After the configuration, the instance must be started with the following command:

$CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh

Do note that the Tomcat 6 instance can be hosted on any machine, not only on the one hosting the Tomcat Virtual Platform. This is because the interaction between the two are performed with a network protocol (HTTP).

Platform Configuration

The final step is to configure the Tomcat Virtual Platform for interacting with the Tomcat 6 instance.

In the $GLOBUS_LOCATION//virtual-platforms/Tomcat6 folder, the Tomcat.properties file has to be edited for a proper configuration. Some of the settings reported in the file do not be touched and left with their default values, other must be filled.

The parameters to set are:

• BaseURL: the host and port on which the Tomcat instance to bridge has configured to run
• User: a valid username holding the roles of manager-gui, manager and manager-script
• Password: the password for that username

The following example shows an example of configured file:

Name=TOMCAT
Version=6
PlatformClass=org.gcube.vremanagement.virtualplatform.tomcat.Container
Resources=
DedicatedClassLoader=true
BaseURL=http://node16.d.d4science.research-infrastructures.eu:9000
User=manuele
Password=tomcat

Verifying the Installation

If everything was properly configured, following a gHN restart, the gHN profile has to report the availability of the Tomcat Platform as follows:

    <Profile>
        <Infrastructure>gcube</Infrastructure>
        <GHNDescription>
            <Name>node16.d.d4science.research-infrastructures.eu:9001</Name>
            <ActivationTime>2011-07-04T19:06:43+02:00</ActivationTime>
            <Status>certified</Status>
            <Type>Dynamic</Type>
 
            <AvailablePlatforms>
                <Platform>
                    <Name>TOMCAT</Name>
                    <Version>6</Version>
                    <MinorVersion>0</MinorVersion>
                </Platform>
            </AvailablePlatforms>
     <!-- ... -->
 
    </Profile>