rPath LAMP Appliance

[VMTN_Admin]

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/465

LAMP Web/DB Appliance. A server appliance that features Apache, MySQL, PostgeSQL, PHP, Python, and Perl.

[Hal_Styli]

Beware, check these 2 links out first rPath Appliances[/url], LAMP Appliance[/url]

Until rPath sorts its doc and forum/support this appliance is of no use to non-experts and if you see no posts in here from rPath telling you it has now got decent doc/active forums...... well draw your own conclusions.

Hal.

[bpja]

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.

[chris2robbins]

A "fair bit of guidance"? You must be kidding - right?????

[mwesley]

Chris,

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

Marty

[bpja]

Chris,

We are very interested in constructive feedback on the appliances we and our community members generate. If you feel that the MediaWiki appliance needs more documentation on how to configure it or use it please let the developers know what specifically you'd like to see. Right now, MediaWiki really has just one web-based configuration screen to be up and running, so it's hard to guess what you might be referring to.

Since this appliance is accessible to many folks, not just participants in the VMTN forums, the best place to provide such feedback would be directly in context with the appliance documentation itself at http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Appliance:MediaWiki_Appliance.

If your comment was actually directed at the LAMP appliance, it's easier to understand. There's a number of things that could certainly be added to both the appliance and the documentation to make it easier to consume as a starting point for LAMP-based development and/or deployment. The feedback page for that appliance is at http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Appliance:LAMP_Appliance and there's already a few bullet points on the Discussion tab indicating things that could be done.

Thanks

Brett Adam

[dwightmccann]

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.

[bpja]

@dwightmccann

There's a reason it's called LAMP and not LAMPC.

More specifically (and less flippantly), one of the main differences between an appliance and a general-purpose "operating system + tools + software" is to include \*only that which is necessary* for the functional goal of the appliance. Since this is a LAMP stack, aimed at developers who wish to deploy their PHP/Perl/Python based web applications, it doesn't include anything else. Think of the OS embedded within this appliance (or any other) as "just enough operating system" to get the primary job done.

Having said that, given that this particular appliance is delivered in VMWare format, it's certainly worth asking the question behind your comment which is "does it make sense to have VMware specific tools installed?". The answer, I believe, is YES. They should be pre-installed as part of the appliance and you should not have to build them yourself.

So in short, it makes no sense to have a C compiler in this (or any other) functional appliance and it makes a LOT of sense to have vm tools baked in.

I've opened an issue against this appliance at https://issues.rpath.com/browse/RBL-851

Thanks for the feedback!

[kmorris5319]

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

[novasource]

I rated this 1/5 because documentation is terrible. The wiki page is a joke.

I am an "intermediate user". While most of my day to day work is in MS products, I have recent BS and MS degrees in Computer Science from an almost exlusively UNIX-based engineering school at a major 4 year university. So I know my way around a UNIX system. Regardless, I can barely figure this one out. Where are the VMWare tools? How do I copy files from my Windows host PC to this machine? (Trying to install Wordpress for testing purposes.)

Sure, in other forums on this site, some have allged that everything is "industry standard," so you should just be able to go to the apache/mysql/postgresql/etc. web sites to for documentation. However, as anyone in the *NIX field should know, *NIX is so variable that even "industry standard" stuff machines still has large variances from machine to machine. So we at least need starting point documentation to get somewhere.

We need documentation for THIS VERY appliance. If the parts to be documented are truly "industry standard," then at least point us in the right direction on your wiki.

[Hal_Styli]

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

Please tell me you missed it. Please!

I'm dying here.

Hal.

[noam]

Hello,

I am interested in evaluating the rPath LAMP Appliance.

Does the appliance have a sendmail server?

Is SMTP enabled so that I can use PHP on the appliance to send email? Or does SMTP have to be configured first?

Thanks

[MarkFrankenfiel]

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.

[MarkFrankenfiel]

Update:

I was able finally to get a succesful build of VMware Tools.

Basic Steps:

conary update gcc --resolve

conary update kernel

REBOOT

conary update kernel:build-tree

conary update kernel:source

You'll get an error about not being able to install source packages after the last.

Then run /usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl and it should find the kernel headers and version.h and allow your to build the tools.

The biggest 'problem' is that you get a warning the the VGMS driver taints the kernel. A liveable problem IMHO.

I should also note, that since the appliance has only a gig of space, I had to create a new HD in the VM and move /usr to this new HD to allow for all of this. If the authors had added another 200 meg to the initial partition size (Or included the tools in an update then none of this would have been needed).

Mark

Message was edited by:

MarkFrankenfield

[joetke]

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[/b], 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[/b] can run only in [i]standalone[/i][/b] mode, provided listen is set to YES in configuration file. It has as well many troubles with ftp clients as gftp[/i] under linux when passive mode is set[/u].

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.

[kenvandine]

Can you please describe the gpm issue a bit?

We have fixed some issues with vsftpd recently and there is a new published release. The recommended method of transferring files is sftp.

The latest release has some significant improvements. Heavily focused on removing the need to login to the command line at all. For some information about the latest release, http://ken.vandine.org/?p=198

[novasource]

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

you?

Please tell me you missed it. Please!

I'm dying here.

Hal.

Yes, I saw it. You linked to nothing useful. All the docs really say is "Hi, this is rPath LAMP. Have a nice day." Gee, thanks.

At least give clues with how you set this up. For example, I've been hunting around for an hour by surfing Google and examining the machine, and I still cannot figure out where you have PHP4 configured. (Need to switch to PHP5 to support mediawiki.) Did you use the standard instructions at php.net? Did you follow the patterns of other major Linux installs?

You don't even bother telling us what versions were installed or linking to the setup procedures you used.

Is this product intended for uber leetzor experts only?

rAA is a step in the right direction, but it has a long way to go.

[sergei_am]

Hi,

LAMP is really great appliance, but could anybody help me to build c++ cgi? I downloaded and installed gcc and g+, also did it for several libraries, but g+ reports that there is no <stdio.h> and other headers like this. In case of building empty (just "main(...) \{ return 0; }") I get "usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lm". I agree that this is not LAMPC, but anyway ....

Thank you.

[gank211]

Hi

This is silly but:

I have the rpath Lamp appliance on my computer and am trying to ftp in to it. however

the URL's

ftp://192.168.2.7/ and ftp://ftp.192.168.2.7/ it returns a server not found error. Is there another url I am supposed to be using?

something I should do to start the server?

thanks.

[gank211]

never mind, did it with smb. thanks for your patience. and this tool, by the way.