2.3.1. SuSE 9.2

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Preparing SuSE 9.2

Introduction

This page explains how to install and configure all SuSE 9.2 pre-requisites, configure a firewall and set-up Tomcat for deployment of a GRIA war.

Software Pre-requisites

This page describes the pre-requisites for the SuSE 9.2 Professional operating system, all of which can be installed using the YaST2 systems configuration tool. They are as follows:

The Java SDK v1.5.0 (5.0) or higher
- java-1_5_0-sun
- java-1_5_0-sun-devel
Jakarta Tomcat 5
- tomcat5
- tomcat5-admin-webapps
- tomcat5-webapps
Apache Server v2.0 (an optional package to provide secure access)
- apache2
- apache2-prefork
- mod_jk-ap20
A web browser, such as Firefox (can be installed on a different machine)
- MozillaFirefox
A sample application (only required for the GRIA Basic Application Services package)
- ImageMagick

In order to provide some synchronisation between the clocks on machines that the various GRIA packages are installed on, it is recommended to run an NTP client service that will synchronise your system with an Internet time server. Having installed the Linux base platform, configure the Network Services to use an NTP server. For SuSe 9.2 this is done as follows:

Run YaST2 and select 'Network Services'
From here, choose 'NTP Client' and select an NTP server, setting it to start on boot up. If you don't have an NTP server available on your local network then select a public one e.g. a.ntp.alphazed.net in Great Britain.

Having configured the machine to use NTP, the system should then be restarted to ensure the changes made during the installation of the above pre-requisites are applied.

This completes the installation of the pre-requisites under SuSE 9.2 Professional.

Configuring the Firewall

The deployed GRIA war (or webapp) should be hosted behind a firewall to ensure that your server can only be accessed on certain ports. You should consult with your systems administrator to determine if you need to run a firewall on the machine hosting the GRIA webapp. If so, configure the firewall as follows:

Run YaST2 (as root).
Click on Security and Users.
Click on Firewall.
Select interface settings appropriate for your network. In most cases, you can set the External Interface to any. The Internal Interface can be left as (none).
On the next page, ensure that only HTTP with SSL (https) is selected. If you require SSH access to the machine then select Secure Shell (ssh).
On the next page, you can leave the default settings for the Firewall Features.
Click on Finish to put the settings into effect.

Set-up Tomcat Users

In order to deploy the war file, the Tomcat Manager for application deployment will be used. The Tomcat manager functions are disabled by default.

To enable Tomcat administration and management we must add a role and a tomcat user to the tomcat-users.xml file.

Open the $CATALINA_HOME/conf/tomcat-users.xml file with a suitable editor and add this element after the last 'role' element:
```
<role rolename="manager"/>
<role rolename="admin"/>
```
Add this line after the last 'user' element, replacing ADMIN_PASSWORD and GRIA_PASSWORD with appropriate passwords:
```
<user username="tomcat" password="TOMCAT_PASSWORD" roles="admin,manager"/>
```
Save the file

Start Tomcat

Having installed and configured the pre-requisites, the next step it to start Tomcat. The following commands assume that the pre-packaged version of Tomcat has been installed with SuSE.

To start Tomcat: