While setting up GlassFish 3.0.1 for a customer on Debian Lenny using 64 bit machines, I ran into the problem that the update tool shipped with GlassFish (OpenSolaris‘s pkg tool) uses a Python interpreter which is part of the package. That Python interpreter however is 32 bit, which requires the ia32 libraries to be installed. Worse, it requires lididn in 32 bit, which is not part of the default Debian packages, so I had to get that one from the (very nice) Debian Multimedia repository. Although that’s a quick fix to get stuff working, we rather not use these repositories on production machines, due to security concerns and the like. Also, upgrades are easier if you only use the standard Debian repositories.
So I decided to see if I could get it working with the Debian supplied Python interpreter. One problem is that there’s a shared object file written in C which is part of the pkg application. That file is a 32 bit ELF too. So we’re going to download that source and recompile it for 64 bit. If you’re on a 32 bit system, you can skip that step (although it doesn’t hurt to do it anyway). First, we need to install the following packages:
apt-get install python2.5 python2.5-dev gcc python-cherrypy python-mako python-openssl python-ply python-pycurl python-simplejson
Now download the source for the _actions.c file from here (link to webpage, press download in the top).
Compile it with the following command:
gcc -I/usr/include/python2.5 -shared -fpic -O2 _actions.c -o _actions.so
Keep the resulting .so file, we’re going to replace it once we’ve downloaded GlassFish. Which is the next step, actually. So download GlassFish and set it up somewhere. I downloaded the tarball and unzipped it into /opt/glassfish.
The resulting directory contains several directories, including a pkg and a glassfish directory. The /opt/glassfish/glassfish directory is the actual GlassFish application. The pkg directory contains the pkg tool which is used to upgrade the GlassFish addons and systems and stuff (don’t ask me about the details, I’m not a Java developer, only a sysadmin). The first time you start it, it installs some stuff. So just run the following:
/opt/glassfish/bin/pkg
Next, mv the file /opt/glassfish/pkg/bin/pkg to /opt/glassfish/pkg/bin/pkg.orig. We do this since this script does all kinds of magic which we do not need. Also, it runs the pkg python code with the python2.4 interpreter that’s part of the package. We don’t want that. Let’s fix it.
Make a simple script to replace the one we moved away. I use the following, which works for me:
#!/bin/sh python /opt/glassfish/pkg/bin/client.py
If you start it now, you’ll get an error:
$ python /opt/glassfish/pkg/bin/client.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/opt/glassfish/pkg/bin/client.py", line 60, in
import pkg
ImportError: No module named pkg
Ok, let’s fix that! Start with creating a directory called /opt/glassfish/pkg/custom-lib. You can change the name into anything you want, of course, as long as it’s clear that this is where you’re going to put the pkg python module. Actually, let’s do that immediatly: cp -r /opt/glassfish/pkg/vendor-packages/pkg /opt/glassfish/pkg/custom-lib
Change our script which we setup to run pkg into the following:
#!/bin/sh PYTHONPATH="/opt/glassfish/pkg/custom-lib" python /opt/glassfish/pkg/bin/client.py
You need to have only the pkg module in there, because the PYTHONPATH variable takes precedence over the other modules installed via the Debian packages. Run the script and you’ll get a new error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/opt/glassfish/pkg/bin/client.py", line 61, in
import pkg.actions as actions
File "/opt/glassfish/pkg/custom-lib/pkg/actions/__init__.py", line 144, in
from _actions import _fromstr
ImportError: /opt/glassfish/pkg/custom-lib/pkg/actions/_actions.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32
If you don’t get this error, you’re on a 32 bit system and you’re done! Congratulations! Otherwise, we’re going to copy the _actions.so file we compiled earlier over the one that’s packaged with GlassFish 3.0.1. Just copy it over the other file, like so: cp _actions.so /opt/glassfish/pkg/custom-lib/pkg/actions/_actions.so
Now we’re really done! You should be able to run /opt/glassfish/bin/pkg image-update now and update your currently installed GlassFish 3.0.1 with the latest modules and stuff. Awesome!
I’m in the process of creating a Debian package for GlassFish 3.0.1 which incorporated this fix. So if you’re not in a hurry or you’re reading this way after it was posted, you might want to check out debian.kumina.nl to see if the package is available.
Hope this helps someone!