Setup Subsonic on IIS 7 (Windows Home Server 2011) - ARR 2.5

[Robandcathy]

Garry your a God send lol, I check every few months to see if anything new pops up, Since once I set up subsonic I don't touch it and do not have to comeback for a while. My question to your last post does the windows installer use tomcat? is there a speed advantage aka transcoding etc. between the .war and the installer? My understanding early on was you had to use .war for a server, now I understand you can use either or. So which would you recommend? FYI certs are a pain in the a** in general with whs 2011. I have had Microsoft, go daddy and a third party work on it nobody can figure it out...ugh. (but I never get a security error using subsonic just when trying to connect to server directly)

[GJ51]

As I've frequently stated I'm a firm believer in the old addage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" camp. The performance gains are perceptible depending on harware power. The faster the hardware, the less noticable the performance difference.

No doubt that the war version has advantages, but initial setup certainly isn't one of them.

I have the good fortune to have 4 servers here in my home with 2 of them able to set up additional VM's. If I had not had the resources to test and play around on seperate instances, I probably wouldn't have moved to the war version. There are advantages, but if you are unfamiliar with how it works in general and don't want to risk messing up what you already have, then it's probably not worth the effort.

Certainly just my opinion - but it can get very time consuming for minimal gains. Yes, I like the war version, but if you're uncomfortable with setting it up it's probably not worth it. It's always hard to guage someone else's comfort level and how much they want to go through. Me, I like to tinker as much for the sake of learning something new as anything else. For me it's recreation, for someone else it could be shear torture and total frustration.

Everyone has to make that decision for themselves.

HTH

[Endosmok]

So I am considering an installation on Windows WHS 2011.

The only question I have is about the advantage/disadvantage of installing this method as opposed to the Windows Subsonic installer?

Thanks

[GJ51]

Advantages:

Speed: The WAR version on Tomcat is a bit faster than the std Windows install.

Upgrading: If you access files on a remote network share, then you're familiar with having to edit the logon permissions of the subsonic service when using the std. Windows ver. With the Windows ver. you have to redo this every time you upgrade. On the WAR ver. once you edit the Tomcat service logon it's done and doesn't need to be redone when upgrading as you just stop the service, delete the work directory and the subsonic folder in the webapps folder, drop in the new WAR file and restart the service. All this is irrelevant if your music libarary is on the local host maching on a local hard drive. It's only an issue if you access UNC shares to get to the files.

Disadvantages: It's a whole different way of doing things if you're the average Windows user that's used to automated installation packages that only require a mouse click to do. Deploying a war file??? - not in the "normal" Windows user's vocab.
The other downside is SSL setup if you want to use encryption. It's much easier to do in the std. Windows install. Learning how to use the Java keystore and editing the right files to get it working is very time consuming and hard to follow for a neophyte.

I enjoy tinkering and learning new things, so for me it's as much a hobby type of thing as anything else. If you're not into putting in time that can be sometimes frustrating, for a bit more speed then it may not be something you want to be bothered with. I think it's something that only the individual can evaluate for themselves based on their own level of comfort with the technologies involved. It's definitely not for someone who doesn't like to read. Anyone who thinks they're just going to click a bunch of things and be happy, need not apply.

[Drashna]

Well, I'm not sure if you're interested, but it's actually really easy to get ARR setup to "show" subsonic in a subdirectory, as opposed to the root folder. And for WHS, I think that works better, IMO.

If you are interested, I have a link... though it only goes over the IIS config, and not subsonic (though I did use that as the example):
http://forum.wegotserved.com/index.php/ ... rse-proxy/

[bushman4]

Have you tried this on WHS 2003?

Glenn

[Drashna]

Nope. Used Jakarta on WHSv1. I tried other solutions, but none seemed to work as well. And I don't think that ARR is available for IIS6 (Which is what WHSv1 uses).

[GJ51]

Thanks for the link. We are in the planning stages to move to Server Essentials 2012 in a few weeks, so I'll be coming back to this down the road.

[Drashna]

Cool! 2012 Essentials is a great product too. And that link should work for that too.
Though, from others, and my own experience, launch WPI from the start menu whenever possible... on 2012, it seems to crash frequently if you load it from the IIS Manager.

[lolomm]

Hello, this thread is awesome!!!! Now i can reach my Subsonic-Site over IIS port 80, thanks a lot csobsidian. Iam using a Windows Server 2008 R2 (SBS 2011).

But how i can setup the UrlRewrite with a virtual subfolder like "music" or "subsonic" under the Default Web Site???

It would be nice if i can reach the Subsonic-Site over https 443 ( My Default Web Site has a StartSSL Cert and are binded to 443)

My problem is that UrlRewrite redirect me to the Root

Example: I try "domainname.me/music/" than it returns "domainname.me/login.view?" but it must be domainname.me/music/login.view? ......

Anyone can help me????

Best Regards

[Drashna]

lolomm,

Depends on how you have it setup.

I posted this above, but you should have a look at this link:
http://forum.wegotserved.com/index.php/ ... rse-proxy/

[lolomm]

Hello Drasha,

Thx U very well for your reply.

It was a write error I only need to ad a "/" in the Rewrite URL.

Now it works perfectly.

[JesterEE]

I was just looking at this again today. While I can get it to work well with Drashna's write up when the Subsonic context path is "/subsonic", if I keep the default "/" context path, I can't seem to get the outbound URL rewrite rules to add the subfolder back in the path.

For example, we would need to get this:
http://localhost:4040/login.view? --> http://www.iis7webserver.com/subsonic/login.view?

but I can only manage to get this:
http://localhost:4040/login.view? --> http://www.iis7webserver.com/login.view?

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <system.webServer>
        <rewrite>
            <rules>
                <rule name="Subsonic Inbound Rule" stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url="(.*)" />
                    <action type="Rewrite" url="http://localhost:4040/{R:1}" />
                </rule>
            </rules>
            <outboundRules>
                <rule name="Subsonic Outbound Rule">
                    <match filterByTags="A" pattern="localhost:4040/(.*)" />
                    <action type="Rewrite" value="http://server/subsonic/{R:1}" />
                </rule>
            </outboundRules>
        </rewrite>
    </system.webServer>
</configuration>


At this point it's just a learning exercise, but does anyone have a suggestion for the outbound rules needed for this? Also would I need separate rules for the local (LAN [http://server/subsonic]) access vs. internet access?

Thanks!
-JesterEE

[Drashna]

Code: Select all

                <rule name="MediaWiki Rewrite">
                    <match url="^subsonic(.*)" ignoreCase="false" />
                    <action type="Rewrite" url="http://otherserver/{R:1}" />
                </rule>


I think you'd want something like this, and just this. At least, that's what is used for my wiki installation, and it seems to work.

Unfortunately, i'm not an expert with the URL rewriting stuff, especially for IIS.

[JesterEE]

Code: Select all

                <rule name="MediaWiki Rewrite">
                    <match url="^subsonic(.*)" ignoreCase="false" />
                    <action type="Rewrite" url="http://otherserver/{R:1}" />
                </rule>


I think you'd want something like this, and just this. At least, that's what is used for my wiki installation, and it seems to work.

Unfortunately, i'm not an expert with the URL rewriting stuff, especially for IIS.

That does work for getting the requests there (arrow 1) ... but getting the responses back (arrow 2) is the hang-up.
If you execute that rule, and input http://server/subsonic, you will get a response like: http://server/login.view? ... so it accesses the subsonic server, but will not respond with the "subsonic" subfolder in the URL. It's basically pointing all URL responses to the wrong place on the server.

The outbound rules look to change the tags in the response page, but transferring the response page to the proper proxied location on the server is a problem. I can't find anything about how one would accomplish this.

Code: Select all

http://server/subsonic/(.*)  --1--> http://localhost:4040/(.*) --2--> http://server/subsonic/(.*)
                        Inbound Rewrite                  Outbound Rewrite and ???

-JesterEE