Subsonic Forum

I have had my Subsonic running with the standard install for several years. I have never had any problems. I have about 20 users using the https version of the site. Subsonic is running on a Win 7 box that is very powerful and does very little else these days.

Im curious if there would be any benefits to using subsonic with Tomcat instead of jetty? Would it make it easier to implement a startssl cert? Any thoughts would be helpful.

Really I am just trying to improve performance and tinker cause thats what I do.

I transitioned from the Win install to Tomcat on my servers some time ago, having been convinced of the advantages by Bushman4.

The two primary advantages are better performance and upgrading is easier to do as when doing an upgrade you don't have to go in and re-edit the service permissions to access network shares. That may or may not apply to your install but it is a big advantage for me.

On the downside, setting up SSL is a lot more complicated, but once done it doesn't need any further setup and is unaffected by the upgrade process.

Depending on the strength of your hardware it may not be worth the troubleshooting involved. Slower hardware will probably see more differences in performance gains.

Read through the Apach Tomcat docs on setting up SSL if you intend to use ssl. It's pretty obtuse and everything has to be done correctly or it won't work. In addition there ars some edit that have to be made in the Java console to get it all working.

Bottom line, if your hardware is strong enough the transition may not be worth the effort unless, like me you enjoy the sheer masochism of just having the fun of making something simple more complicated. Either way if you take the plunge be prepared that you'll most likely run into some down time and frustration if your not familiar with the process. On the upside, there are a few of us set up this way that can probably help you resolve most issues, but in all honesty, I'd have to find my notes and review the process myself to be sure I got it right. Setting up the certificate is the hardest part.

If you don't plan on using ssl it's pretty easy. Install Tomcat to use the port you currently have assigned to Subsonic, drop in the war and go.

Be sure to use Tomcat 6, Subsonic runs into problems on Tomcat 7.

Gary,
Is this the post you are referring to for enabling ssl with the tomcat and war version?
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4247
Thanks!

Yes that's it. the basic setup isn't too bad, but I've had mixed results getting SSL working. I have a site that it works on just fine, and another that just downloads an empty file when I try to enable SSL instead of loading the site. I believe I've set everything up identically, but obviously there's a difference I can't pinpoint.

I have spent tons of hours getting the sites up and running and been over all the steps multiple times, but still the one server throughs a fit if I try to enable SSL. Wish I knew the answer and hope others don't have the same problem.

Gary - Does installing Tomcat cause any issues with IIS on WHS boxes? - I was wondering about conflicts.

Sorting out complicated stuff via RDP is a PITA

Not at all. I just select the Subsonic port I'm going to use when I install Tomcat so that there isn't any conflict with the WHS ports.

The only issue I've run into is the SSL setup. One of my sites just doesn't want to get it right, yet I have other instances that work fine. That's the only problem I've had so far.

I really like the ease of upgrade and the performance. I no longer have to re-edit the service account to access media stored on network shares after each upgrade.

Overall it's just more better.

Gary,
I really enjoy configuring subsonic and my WHS server but if you are having complications with the SSL configuration, maybe I will just stick to using a vpn service when out and about. That sounds like a headache I am not ready for. Thanks for your help.

I'm pretty sure i just boluxed the setup of the certificate, but as you can read for yourself this isn't the easiest thing you can do on a computer.

http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/ssl-howto.html

Here is my experience with the conversion.

Previously I had only one instance of Madsonic running with the standard exe install using Jetty as the server. I had it setup so http redirected to https and the domain was setup using dyndns and was something like https://xxxxxxxx.dnaslias.net

The reason I decided to give Tomcat a try was that MadEvil fixed Madsonic to work with Tomcat 7.0. When I was using the standard version of Subsonic I was never able to get Subsonic to work under Tomcat 7.0. To convert all I had to do was disable Jetty, install Tomcat and use java to create the SSL key. It took about 30 minutes for the transition to work with SSL.

My only complaint now is that my website address isnt nearly as nice. I have not been able to figure out how to make subsonic the root of the domain. So now my address is https://xxxxx.dnalias.net:8443/subsonic I dont love that but I am trying to figure out how to make it much shorter, I don't like having the port number followed by subsonic but it works for now.

The main reason I wanted to switch was that I want an SSL certificate signed by start sll so all my users dont have to agree to allow the cert every time. This is the next step.

- delete the ROOT directory
- name your war file "ROOT.war" (capitals mandatory)
- drop the ROOT.war file directly in the /webapps directory.

This will make subsonic the "default" web app that responds at https://xxxxx.dnalias.net:8443/

HTH,

Glenn

Nice trick Glenn, wasn't aware of that!