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BlueDragon 6.2 on Knoppix

Sat, 07 May 2005 01:38:06 -0800

Now that I got my Knoppix box lit up in very little time, I want to run BlueDragon on it. For those of you who don't know, BlueDragon is a free alternative to ColdFusion, which is just under $1700 for the standard version of CFMX 7. Free ain't too bad a price, I figure.

I tried installing BlueDragon before on my Fedora Core 2 box, and it never did work. I just couldn't figure out what was going wrong, and not being a Linux guru, I gave up.

Well, that was then, this is now. I downloaded BlueDragon 6.2 for Linux from www.newatlanta.com, got it untarr'd, read the ReadMe, and ran the installer as root. Then I ran the installer as not-root, cuz it dies if you run it as root. I think the docs said as much but I didn't catch on.

Anyhow, I ran the GUI version of the installer, and changed the default install directory to the /opt2 directory I made on /dev/hda3. Guess what? It didn't work. I ran the same installation again in "command line" mode, and I saw the problem. It looks like some paths are hardcoded in the installer. I re-ran the installer from the command line, this time, going with the default paths. Everything worked like a champ.

What took a while was finding the startup and shutdown scripts. Here is where they are:
/usr/local/NewAtlanta/BlueDragon_Server_62/bin/StopBlueDragon.sh
/usr/local/NewAtlanta/BlueDragon_Server_62/bin/StartBlueDragon.sh

I stuck these into webmin, cuz I like webmin for an easy server admin tool. The docs explain how to add them without webmin, but whatever.

Anyhow, I fired up BlueDragon, visited http://localhost:8080/index.cfm and wah-la, there is the startup page. Sweet.

The whole thing took probably 30 minutes of my time.

Did I mention I'm loving Knoppix?

And now for Apache 2

Okay, a few weeks pass, as does the novelty of using port 8080 for all the web requests. I notice when using the BlueDragon admin that it claims it cannot install the Apache adapter because there is no Apache in place. Well, there certainly is Apache, but according to the BD docs, it isn't the right version. The version of Apache installed by the Knoppix CD is the 1.3x version, and BD requires the new 2.0x version.

I googled around for solutions, and really never found an obvious answer. The closest I found was "apt-get".

# apt-get update

And a bunch of stuff gets listed.

Hm. I read what I can on apt-get, learn almost nothing, try and fail, and then try:

# apt-get upgrade apache
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
ipppd isdnacti
{a load more of stuff}
zlib1g zlib1g-dev
273 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 63 not upgraded.
Need to get 273MB of archives.
After unpacking 11.9MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

I answer "Y". And after watching the endless scroll of stuff, it occurs to me that I should have read the previous dialog a bit better before answering "Y". It turns out I just asked apt-get to upgrade all the packages, not just Apache. Oh well, no use whining about it. I'll let it run and see how things go. Looks like this could be an all-nighter.

I run Apahce. And it's still version 1.3. Arg.

# apt-get remove apache

And from all I can see, Apache is still installed.

I restart the server, and yeah, Apache is still there. Whatever.

I decide to download Apache2 from www.apache.org, figuring on that they are the best source, right? Nothing on the page leaps out and shouts "apache2", and searching their site for "apache2" is pretty useless, too. Turns out what I want is "HTTP Server", which makes sense. The Apache folks have dozens of projects , of which Apache itself is but one. From there I end up at the download page.

And... realizing I'm working on my Windows laptop, I instead do an ssh into my linux box and...

# wget http://apache.mirrormax.net/httpd/httpd-2.0.54.tar.bz2

and you do the md5sum thing, unzip, untar, blah blah, and now I have a /tmp/httpd-2.0.54 subdirectory, cuz' I did the wget from the /tmp folder.

okay, so now what?

I go into the /httpd-2.0.54 directory, and read the INSTALL file. The instructions seem real good, so I'm willing to follow 'em.

I follow the instructions, basically it's...

# ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache2
# make
# make install
# /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start

And wah-lah, when I fire up Firefox and visit the default page for my server, it is the new Apache. Great.

I visit the BlueDragon admin page on the server, go to the Adapters section, and see the same old "No web servers are present" notice. I know Apache2 is running, but BlueDragon doesn't.

I'm thinking reboot. Before doing so, though, I use webmin to shut down the old Apache, and I set it to "Disable on boot". I create a new bootup/shutdown action, name it "apache2", and I set the start/stop actions to...

/usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start
/usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl stop

After that, I do the reboot.

And success is mine. Thank you Jesus! I visit the BlueDragon admin page, go to the Adapters section, and there is the Apache adapter. I leave the default port of 9999 alone, cuz' the documentation says that the adapter port is not the same as the port you will use for web browsing.

So, now, I've got BlueDragon running on Knoppix, using Apache as the webserver. Great! I haven't tried connecting to mySQL on my other server, but I'll wait on that for another day.

Knoppix install to hard disk

Thu, 05 May 2005 10:00:20 -0800

Having failed at installing Gentoo Linux, I am giving knoppix a shot. I downloaded the iso using bittorrent, and burnt it to a CD with no difficulty. The CD booted up just fine, and, just as claimed, there sits a completely functional Linux instance, running purely from the CD! This is more like it! Of course, running from a CD is a whole lot different than running from disk, so let's seeif things go any better.

I'm already seeing some differences between Gentoo and Knoppix; with Gentoo, the documentatin was very specific, but the product just didn't work (for me, at least). With Knoppix, the documentation is pretty vague, but the product does seem to work.

Documentation? http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Hd_Install_HowTo

With the Knoppix gui running, I can see the two partitions I have left over from the failed Gentoo install, but in the name of fair play, I will delete and recreate them.

I fire up a command-line window, and...

$ su
# fdisk /dev/hda ... d ... 3 ... d ... 2 ... d ... 1 ... w

and just like that, it's gone! BTW, I finally figured out that when folks document command-line stuff, the $ and # is so ya know it is a non-root or root user. Not sure why that didn't click a few years ago. Whatever.

Now to make the new partitions. The docs say
"It´s recommend to use 5 GB for root partition and 400 MB for swap partition.

(NOTE: Be sure the root partition is the first partition on the drive, is formatted with ext2 or ext3, and is set to "active." The swap partition must be formatted with "linux-swap." Installation and subsequent booting will not continue otherwise.)"

Now I make three partitions, the first will be a 5gb root, the second a 400mb swap, and the third for my stuff. Also, I should note that at this point (as of this paragraph), I am writing this using Firefox, running from Knoppix as I do the fdisk! Now that's cool. Okay, the partition stuff, I did a cut-n-paste from the command-line window to here, so you can see all the blab:

root@1[knoppix]# fdisk /dev/hda

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 19885.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): n
Command action
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-19885, default 1):
Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-19885, default 19885): +5000M

Command (m for help): t
Selected partition 1
Hex code (type L to list codes): 83

Command (m for help): n
Command action
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 2
First cylinder (9690-19885, default 9690):
Using default value 9690
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (9690-19885, default 19885): +400M

Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-4): 2
Hex code (type L to list codes): 82
Changed system type of partition 2 to 82 (Linux swap)

Command (m for help): n
Command action
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 3
First cylinder (10466-19885, default 10466):
Using default value 10466
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (10466-19885, default 19885):
Using default value 19885

Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-4): 3
Hex code (type L to list codes): 83

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy.
The kernel still uses the old table.
The new table will be used at the next reboot.
Syncing disks.

So now that's done. It says I need to reboot, so, I suppose I'll reboot!

(2 days later)

Now to format the partitions.

knoppix@1[knoppix]$ su
root@1[knoppix]# mkfs.ext3 /dev/hda1
mke2fs 1.37 (21-Mar-2005)
/dev/hda1 is mounted; will not make a filesystem here!
root@1[knoppix]# fstab
bash: fstab: command not found
root@1[knoppix]# cat /etc/fstab
/proc      /proc       proc   defaults            0 0
/sys       /sys        sysfs noauto              0 0
/dev/pts   /dev/pts    devpts mode=0622           0 0
/dev/fd0   /mnt/auto/floppy auto   user,noauto,exec,umask=000    0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/auto/cdrom auto   user,noauto,exec,ro 0 0
# Added by KNOPPIX
/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 ext2 noauto,users,exec 0 0
# Added by KNOPPIX
/dev/hda2 /mnt/hda2 auto noauto,users,exec 0 0
# Added by KNOPPIX
/dev/hda3 /mnt/hda3 auto noauto,users,exec 0 0
root@1[knoppix]#

So as you can see, after that reboot, it looks like Knoppix already took care of /dev/hda1. Looks like /dev/hda2 needs to be formatted as a swap partition, though.

root@1[knoppix]# mkswap /dev/hda2
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 400486 kB

That went well enough. Now to format /dev/hda3.

root@1[knoppix]# mkfs.ext3 -b 4096 /dev/hda3
mke2fs 1.37 (21-Mar-2005)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
594368 inodes, 1186920 blocks
59346 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
37 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
16064 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736

Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (8192 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

This filesystem will be automatically checked every 26 mounts or
180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.

and that looks good, too. I forgot to set /dev/hda1 to be active, though. Time to fix that, too.

Good.

And the documentation I found at the wiki says to type
sudo knoppix-installer
I do. It turns out I could have done this in the first place, cuz it is now running and formatting /dev/hda1 for me. After I did all that work! Oh well, that's what I get for not reading, right? Yep. Well, maybe it wasn't all in vain, I think I had to create the partitions first, so perhaps I didn't waste too much effort.

Knoppix is now installing to the hard drive, while I'm typing this stuff in at the same time. I like this, this is sweet.

(45 minutes later)
The installer could not determine my video card type; as the screen was going crazy. I wiggled the mouse and was back at the installer. It asked if I wanted to create a boot floppy, and I did, so I put in a blank floppy and hit "OK".

The installer quit immediately, the floppy never got accessed. The command sh... no wait, I just got a blurb "Knoppix was successfully installed to the hd." Good!

I never saw the floppy light come on, though. I think the floppy is blank. Whatever.

I eject the floppy, and shut down the server. I remove the Knoppix CD and reboot the server. And behold, there is a login screen. I try to login as root, and am notified that I cannot login as root. Now that is something I am not used to, but whatever. I log in with the user account I created at some point, I forgot when; I think it was while the installer GUI was running. Anyhow, I long in just fine. I'm typing this out from Knoppix running off my hard drive, so I'm a pretty happy guy at this point.

I've got Knoppix lit up on my hd, it took very little effort. I am definately a Knoppix fan as of this moment!

So now that I got what I came for, what next? My plan is to install Blue Dragon on this guy. I'm presuming Apache is on here, if not, I'll install that, too.