Blogging Roller

After setting up the Roller datasource by following the instructions in the Orion docs Roller still would not work. Turns out, unlike Tomcat, OC4J needs to see a resource-ref in web.xml for before it allows access to a datasource. Once I added that resource-ref to web.xml, Roller was able to find it's datasource. I am now able to view weblog pages on OC4J. The next step is to configure authentication so I can login.

This is what I added to OC4J/config/data-sources.xml:

  <data-source   
    class="com.evermind.sql.DriverManagerDataSource" 
    name="rollerdb" location="jdbc/rollerdb" 
    connection-driver="org.gjt.mm.mysql.Driver" 
    username="scott" 
    password="tiger" 
    url="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/roller?autoReconnect=true" 
    inactivity-timeout="30" 
    schema="database-schemas/my-sql.xml" /> 

This is what I added to Roller's web.xml:

  <resource-ref>
    <res-ref-name>jdbc/rollerdb</res-ref-name>
    <res-type>javax.sql.DataSource</res-type>
    <res-auth>Container</res-auth>
  </resource-ref>

It is late and I'm tired of this experiment in install-blogging, so I'm gonna call it a night. I hope I haven't bored you to tears and caused you to unsubscribe from my RSS feed. I'll wrap things up tomorrow night and give you a final report.

I got the horrible "error: Invalid class file format... The major.minor version'48.0' is too recent..." error message from OC4J. So I switched from JDK1.4.0_02 back to JDK 1.3 and now Roller is actually coming up, but it can't find it's datasource. Fortunately, little Leo needs some attention because I need a break. UPDATE: Matt from the JavaLobby suggested these fixes for the JDK 1.4 problem, but I have not tried them yet:

Add this to the entry for the JSP servlet in config/global-web-application.xml:

  <init-param>
    <param-name>javaccmd</param-name>
    <param-value>/usr/java/j2sdk1.4.1/bin/javac</param-value>
  </init-param>

Add this to the end of config/server.xml:

  <compiler executable="javac"
    classpath="/usr/java/j2sdk1.4.1/jre/lib/rt.jar" />

I gave up on the Oracle OC4J docs. They keep on pointing to something called dcmctl that I didn't get in the OC4J download. The appendix says that dcmctl lives in $ORACLE_HOME/dcm/bin/dcmctl and I am not in the mood to download Oracle right now. So, I pointed my browser at the Orion website and found some more reasonable docs. OC4J is just an OEM version of Orion.

I dumped Roller in OC4J/home/roller and then added the following to OC4J/home/config/server.xml:

   <application name="roller" path="../roller" />

this to OC4J/home/config/application.xml:

   <web-module id="roller" path="../../home/roller" />

and this to OC4J/home/config/http-web-site.xml:

   <web-app application="default" name="roller" root="/roller" />

Now I'm getting a string of error messages that indicate that OC4J is attempting to deploy Roller. Good.

After 20 minutes reading the docs and rocking Leo with my foot, I still couldn't figure out how to start OC4J but Leo did fall asleep. I made a guess, tried typing java -jar oc4j.jar, and that worked. After searching the config files, I figured out that the Servlet Engine was running on port 8888 and I verified that with my browser. Now, Let's see if the docs can be any help in deploying Roller.

Now that story-time is over, the big boys are tucked in, Leo is napping, and Andi is out for a glass of wine the fun can begin.

No docs were included in the 24MB OC4J download, so I hit the Oracle OTN site and found the Oracle9iAS Containers for J2EE User's Guide. Chapter 2 is what I want. I think I want to run just a single instance, but the docs make that sounds a little naughty - "this undermines the enterprise management provided by the Enterprise Manager." Whatever. Uh oh, Leo is awake and he is not happy about his cold.

Tonight's fun activity is going to be installing Roller on the Oracle OC4J 9.0.3 J2EE appserver and at the same time caring for a sniffly nosed 4 month old. I just finished downloading the 24,266,496 byte OC4J zip file.

I thank my parents and my sister for an awesome childhood - where life was simple and dreams were boundless. [Matt Raible, The Cabin]

Excellent story Matt, and those pictures are wonderful.

The reason blogs complicate things is that each one adds at least one more identity to the author's roster, which is always complicated to begin with. And most of us know very little about each other to begin with as well. [Doc Searls]

However, Oracle9i AS users get the new version of TopLink free while users of the other vendors' products must pay $7,000 per processor. [InfoWorld]. Oracle assures us that TopLink will continue to support other databases and app servers. Why the hell doesn't the InfoWorld article have a link to TopLink?