All of the rPath appliances now have Wiki pages with installation, configuration and related notes. These are the "Project Home" pages linked from the rBuilder Online project page - which is itself the entry linked from the VMWare virtual appliance catalog.

For example, the MediaWiki appliance project home page is at http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Appliance:MediaWiki_Appliance and provides a fair bit of guidance for getting started.

The LAMP appliance likewise has a project home page at http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Appliance:LAMP_Appliance

Please check out those resources and provide constructive feedback for further documentation and enhancements in the Wiki itself.

Chris,

Is there some information that you think is missing from either of the two links posted above?

Marty

I was unable to install the VMware tools. Even installing "All" did not get a C compiler or many "normal" utilities ... lspci was the item first reported unavailable that stopped the install. Perhaps a wonderful appliance for an application server but a bit tough to control with VMware tools such as vmware-cmd. I will try a different applicance from somewhere else or if all else fails I'll try XAMMP.

The main complaint I have with the rPath MediaWiki appliance is it does not contain an ftp server. Without this it is nearly useless to me because I need to customize skins, add extensions and add packages, etc.

Thanks,
Kevin

You did see the second post in this thread didn't you?

Please tell me you missed it. Please!

I'm dying here.

Hal.

This Appliance has so much potential. But it's also missing so much as well.

1st - Simple things like (Docs. Yes I know there is a Wiki, but it's empty)
Simple tools like unzip, bzip. Tar is present.
2nd - VMware tools.

Some doc notes and things I have figured out. rpath uses is own package manager (conary), which will let you install some things. It's simlair to using yum.

For example:
"conary update ImageMagik --resolve" will install ImageMagic for example and resolve any dependencies.

I've even done:
conary update gcc --resolve
conary update kernel:build-tree

The Later is supposed to install the kernel headers
in an attempt to be able to install vmware tools. I did that, but for some reason ended up with a kernel header version newer then the version the VM image is using.

I'm attempting a 'conary updateall' which is supposed to update every and I'll post my results.

This appliance contains a severe security hole. I have it exchanging data (http, ftp protocols) with a standalone linux box -which I suppose is well secured through different monitors. Each time I boot your appliance, when it launches gpm daemon, this latter sends a discovery message and tried to get the linuxbox root directory list.
My question: Is it a feature (I doubt heavily) or am I a kind of victim of a fake download of your application from a fake mirror of your site ?
vsftpd can run only in standalone mode, provided listen is set to YES in configuration file. It has as well many troubles with ftp clients as gftp under linux when passive mode is set.
Eventually your appliance is not as useful as one might think at the first glance. Shell scripts can't be effective because most of interesting commands such curl etc.. were not embedded.
Last but not least, your package utility is far from a descent rpm package manager e.g. and much more far from yast or al. It is definitely complicated and I didn't catch the worth of building from scratch such proprietary a system when acceptable ones still exist and had proved their efficiency and versatility.
I am very disappointed by this appliance and decided to implement my own LAMP appliance based on redhat 7.3 and not so heavy one compared to yours...with a peace of mind as award...
If someone is interested in getting it, I will release a copy through VMware appliances directory.
VMware appliances remain to me a GREAT concept as VMware is one of the GREATEST PIECES OF SOFTWARE around.