Please help with Ubuntu install...pretty please!

[Iggster]

A little background first:

I am currently running Subsonic 3.5b2 (build 666) under windows XP and Jetty and have been a Subsonic user for around 12 months now....I LOVE IT...without doubt the best web based Music Jukebox available imho!

I now want to run Subsonic under Ubuntu as I've read that Jetty can really limit the performance of Subsonic (also Ubuntu seems to be far more suited to running this type of service)

I currently have a Ubuntu server running Apache/php/mysql and it runs a couple of web based html/php/mysql apps (Joomla being one) on port 80 and it works like a dream.



My problem is, I am totally lost when it comes to installing/configuring Subsonic.

My current web service runs from http://my-url/ (main app)
with sub apps on http://my-url/subdir1, http://my-url/subdir2 etc.
I would like Subsonic available in http://my-url/subsonic if this is possible, If this is not possible then http://my-url:81 would be my second choice.

What i really need is someone to tell me:

1) what other packages do i need to install in order to support Subsonic? (tomcat? Java JDK/JDE?)
2) what apt-get commands do i need to run to install these packages?
3) what manual configurations do i need to make?
4) what Subsonic download do I need? (standalone/WAR?)
5) where do i put the subsonic files?
6) what Subsonic files do i need to configure?
7) does Subsonic make use of mysql? If so what configuration is needed?
where do i put the transcode directory in order for transcoding to work? and are there any special configurations needed under Ubuntu?

Thankyou very much in advance for any help/advice given.

[braddyo]

Back at the beginning of this year I had Ubuntu Server running as a headless media server and Subsonic ran perfectly on it - now I have my Vista desktop running it as a service (haven't noticed a performance hit, though I rarely have more than 3 users on at once).

It was VERY easy for me to install Subsonic. The key is to install Tomcat and Java. There are tons of tutorials online for installing Tomcat on Ubuntu Server - google is good for that. Once you have Tomcat running successfully and you can hit the Tomcat page from outside your server you just need to drop the WAR file in the /webapps/ directory and it will automatically install itself. Beautiful, really. A WAR file is a tomcat distribution file. Like a JAR file but for web apps.

Go herefor detailed steps on getting Subsonic installed under Tomcat. Good luck, and post if that doesn't work.



----------------
Now playing: Paloalto - Breathe In
via FoxyTunes

[sindre_mehus]

You can also consider using the standalone version of Subsonic. All you need extra is Java 5 or later.

And for what it's worth: I have no reason to believe that Jetty performs worse than Tomcat.

[Iggster]

Many thanks for the replies gents!

As usual this has raised a number of other questions

Am I correct in thinking the standalone version is accessed via the apache web service?

These are the Java versions i have:

sudo update-java-alternatives -l
java-1.5.0-sun 53 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun
java-6-sun 63 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

are these correct?

I also tried the standalone install and received the following errors when i ran the startup script:

sudo sh subsonic.sh
: not found: 2:
: not found: 5:
: not found: 8:
: not found: 11:
: not found: 14:
: not found: 15:
subsonic.sh: 16: /bin/java: not found
: not found: 17: -Dsubsonic.contextPath=/


What have i missed?

[sindre_mehus]

I'm no Ubuntu expert, but here are my two cents.

o The Subsonic standalone download has an embedded Jetty server, and requires no Apache or whatever.
o The Java packages look fine to me. I recommend using Java 6.
o I'm not sure what's wrong with the script. Sounds like it's an issue with Windows vs Unix newlines. Do you have a "dos2unix" utility to convert to proper newlines? Or fix it manually in vi, emacs etc.
o You must set JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to the Java installation. Either in the script or in the shell.

Sindre

[Iggster]

Once again thankyou for your time and advice.


I have now decided the the Tomcat / WAR file solution is the way to go, however as expected...more questions/problems.

I have installed Tomcat 5.5 under Ubuntu and the result is:

If you're seeing this page via a web browser, it means you've setup Tomcat successfully. Congratulations!

I then used the Tomcat web applications manager to browse to and deploy the Subsonic WAR.

Subsonic now appears in the Tomcat applications list...hooray!

However when i click "Start" i get the following error on the manager screen:

FAIL - Application at context path /subsonic could not be started

And in the tomcat log i find:

INFO: Deploying web application archive subsonic.war
01-Oct-2008 04:18:04 org.apache.commons.modeler.Registry registerComponent
SEVERE: Error registering Catalina:type=Valve,name=StandardContextValve,path=/subsonic,host=localhost
javax.management.MBeanException: Cannot instantiate ModelMBean of class org.apache.commons.modeler.BaseModelMBean


followed by many pages of detail.

Can anyone point me in the right direction again?

Thanks in advance.