Install GlassFish on FreeBSD shared server

Question

I asked this on superuser as well, but with no answers (even no views). If it's wrong to mention it here, please let me know or just move it. Thanks.

We are using a shared server (six people with root access for each user), which is reinstalled and -configured soon. I agreed to install GlassFish for everyone to use. However, I am developer and do only know basiscs of Unix/Linux.

Now my question is, what do I have to consider if I want to meet these requirements:

Automatic startup on reboot (did not happen often in the past) Easy integration with Apache Usage of existing MySQL/PostgresSQL instance Patterns/Tools for easy (shared) usage (installation of JEE apps, administration) Patterns/Tools for easy (shared) monitoring (resources (mem, db), applications) Tools for easing remote development (EJB/WAR deployment, JRebel?) Of course, there might be other topics I forgot which should be addressed.

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you have experience with Windows only then I would strongly consider using a Windows box for this. The Glassfish distribution has functionality to register a given domain as a service, and I would suggest that you just create a domain for each developer.

Answer 2

Automatic start up under FreeBSD can simply be implemented using a start-up script which should just do 'asadmin start-domain' to start glassfish and 'asadmin stop-domain'. I'm sure there's a number of articles on start-up script creation for your version of FreeBSD (I would check FreeBSD Handbook first). As to remote deployments - you just need a local copy of glassfish and should use it's asadmin utility - it has command line arguments that allow doing any administrative tasks with remote glassfish installations as long as you have admin password on them.