BitNami's Blog

Performance Tuning for Rails Apps

2008-11-05T14:07:54Z

We have recently updated BitNami RubyStack to include FiveRun’s TuneUp This module allows you to do performance tuning of your Ruby on Rails app before you put it into production. TuneUp was developed by FiveRuns and is a free application profiling tool for Rails and Merb developers. It makes it fast and easy to troubleshoot and spot bottlenecks in your app, and even provides a way for you to collaborate with other developers who may be experiencing similar problems. Download RubyStack to check it out. Let us know in the forums of other modules you would like to see included in future releases of RubyStack

Join our Team

2008-10-30T14:59:41Z

If you enjoy BitNami and automating the installation and configuration of open source web technologies, consider joining the BitRock team. More details on our blog

2008 Open Source CMS Award and BitNami

2008-10-07T12:55:27Z

It’s time to select the winners for the annual Open Source CMS Awards. The list has already been narrowed down to 20 finalists and you have until 20th Oct to vote for your favorite Content Management Solution. BitNami makes it easy to give the top-voted CMS systems a try by providing the apps listed below in self-contained installers.

Drupal: Finalist for Overall Open Source CMS Award and Best PHP Open Source CMS.

Joomla!: Finalist for Overall Open Source CMS Award and Best PHP Open Source CMS.

eZ Publish: Finalist Best PHP Open Source CMS

Joomla! and Drupal were the overall winners for the 2006 and 2007 contests. They also received awards for the best PHP Open Source CMS systems in 2007. Wordpress also received an award for being the best Open Source Social Networking Content Management System.

As with all BitNami Stacks, the Drupal, Joomla!, eZ Publish and Wordpress Stacks can be installed and uninstalled in just a few clicks without interfering with any of the software already installed on your system.

We are very proud to have all of these winning applications available in easy to install packages on BitNami.

What is a Module and Why Should I Care?

2008-10-03T16:52:18Z

BitNami Modules for PHP were released some time ago, but a lot of BitNami users still don’t know about them and the wide range of possibilities they offer to have a custom installation. This article will explain the difference and why you may want to consider using BitNami Modules instead of the stand-alone Stacks.

The BitNami Project started with what we call Stacks, which are ready-to run packages of popular open source web applications. Because the packages contain everything you need in order to run an application, even non-technical users can have the software installed and running in just a few minutes. BitNami Stacks are completely self-contained, so they will not interfere with software already installed on your system.

However, Stacks are not the optimal solution if you want to use more than one application. Why is that? It is because having several web and database servers is very resource-intensive and can slow down your system. It is much less stressful for the machine to just have one of each type of running and connect all of the installed applications to those (in other words, have servers shared by the applications.)

BitNami Modules are installers, much lighter than the Stacks, that simply bundle the desired application and the actions that are needed to configure it on top of an already existing installation of the servers. Using the modules, you can have a custom installation that contains all of the applications you want to run. Everything is located in the same folder, so the BitNami platform and applications are completely independent and self-contained so they do not mess with your system and are easy to install and uninstall.

Currently, BitNami Modules are only available for PHP and Ruby on Rails applications (such as Joomla!, MediaWiki, WordPress, Drupal, Tracks or Redmine). To install Modules, you need to:

Download the base Stack, which will install and configure the BitNami platform on your machine. Currently, the Stacks that can serve as a base for the Modules are LAMPStack, WAMPStack, MAMPStack, SAMPStack and RubyStack. If you want to mix PHP and Ruby on Rails applications, you need to use RubyStack. Otherwise, choose the *AMPStack appropriate for your operating system, download and run the installer.

For each application that you want to deploy, download the corresponding Module and install it in the same path you selected for the base Stack.

An example may make it more clear. Imagine that you are a Windows user who wants to compare two applications like Joomla! and Drupal. Before we released BitNami Modules, you would have had to install both JoomlaStack and DrupalStack, each of which is around 40 MB. Now, you just download and install WAMPStack (40 MB). Then, you download Drupal Module (3.5 MB) and Joomla Module (7 MB) and select the WAMPStack folder during installation. Compared to the 80 MB that you downloaded in the first case, using the Modules means that you only need to download 50 MB. Not only that, but the memory and CPU usage of your computer will be much less when using Modules.

I hope this article makes the difference between Modules and Stacks a little clearer. We’d really like to get your feedback regarding the Modules concept. Are you already using Modules? Do you think that they are a better solution than Stacks? Should we focus on improving them? We’d love to hear your thoughts in our forums.

Managing your servers with the new graphical interface (BETA)

2008-09-18T15:13:14Z

We are glad to announce the availability of the beta version of a tool that will make working with open source web applications and servers even easier than it was before.

The BitNami Control Panel is a (very) simple graphical interface that can start and stop the BitNami servers that are located in the same installation directory.

Take into account that this is a beta version, and currently only available for OS X users. It is included in the new MAMPStack and MAPPStack versions that have been released today. To start the utility, double click the file named ‘control’ from your file browser.

The use of the tool is pretty easy. There are buttons to start, stop and restart each server at a time or all the servers at once. Also, you can find a text box showing the result of the commands introduced.

You can comment about it at the following post on the forums

Cheers,
The BitNami Team

BitNami mentions, making people happy

2008-08-22T14:45:08Z

CMSTester is a website for comparing CMS solutions that reviews and describes many of the software packages you can download from BitNami. They recently discovered our website. Highly recommended!

BitNami is being used in numerous commercial settings, such as for creating customized image-processing websites and installing Fogbugz bug tracking system.

Our Ruby on Rails stack gets mentioned in a InfoQ overview and the Building Browser Games introductory tutorial.

Our PostgreSQL web stack announcement was picked up by numerous sites, including Postgres Weekly News, which is really nice!.

Finally, we love to hear from our users, specially when they are as enthusiastic as Greg Winn. Algot Runeman and this WordPress user mention how BitNami has simplified their lives.

Five Reasons BitNami Makes Your Life Easier

2008-09-04T11:05:17Z

If you’re not already familiar with BitNami, the aim of the project is to help spread the adoption of open source software by making it easier than ever to install and configure. Whether you’re an experienced techie or a total newbie, you’ll be able to get open source applications installed in just minutes with our easy to use installers. Still not convinced? Read on for 5 reasons BitNami will make your life easier.

1.- A wide variety of great applications

BitNami provides a diverse catalog of Open Source applications for both personal and business use. BitNami-packaged applications range from wikis and blogging software to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software. In addition to the application stacks, several development stacks are available for languages such as PHP, JRuby ,Ruby and Python. BitNami currently offers 30 ready-to-run, open source software stacks, and we’re constantly adding more. You can vote for your favorite application to be packaged in our polls.

2.- Easy to install.

One of the greatest benefits of the BitNami Stacks is that they are incredibly easy to install. Even if you are not very technical, you can have a BitNami Stack up and running in just a few mouse clicks. All of the installation and configuration steps are completely automated for each BitNami Stack. All you have to do is answer a few simple questions, click ‘Next’ and ‘Finish’. Don’t believe us? Try it for yourself! Download the BitNami Stack for your favorite application and take it for a spin.

Uninstalling the Stacks is just as easy as installing them. Just run the uninstaller and your system will be right back to the way it was pre-install.

3.- Choice of deployment method: A native, self-contained distribution, a modular platform or in the cloud.

BitNami Stacks are available in three different formats:

Stacks: BitNami Stacks are completely self-contained and run independently of the rest of the software or libraries installed on your system. So, you don’t have to worry about installing dependencies on your system to make the new application work, because the Stack already includes everything you need to run it. They also won’t interfere with any other software installed on your system, so everything you’re already running will continue to work normally.

Modules: BitNami Modules give you the added benefit of being able to install several applications on top of a single infrastructure (Apache+MySQL+PHP) stack. This makes it much more efficient to run multiple BitNami-packaged applications on the same machine. It also makes it possible to share user and system data across applications and have a centralized point of control over what software is installed and running on your system.

Cloud: Even if you prefer to run your software on top of a third-party’s infrastructure, such as EC2, BitNami has a solution for you. We’ve partnered with Rightscale to allow you to deploy a BitNami Stack to Amazon’s EC2 in just one click. You can now launch, monitor, and manage your BitNami Stack instances on multiple servers with Rightscale’s easy to use GUI. All you pay for is your compute time on Amazon – and Rightscale even gives you 10 free hours to get started! Visit http://www.bitnami.org/rightscale to learn more.

4.- Use the Same Stack for Evaluation, Development and Deployment

The ease of installing and uninstall apps makes BitNami Stacks ideal for evaluating new applications, but they are also meant for both development and production use. BitNami Stacks are great for development because you can install and run several instances of the same stack on a single machine makes, and we work hard to make sure they are stable enough for deployment into production. The fact that you can run the same BitNami Stack across all of these different environments makes it very easy to maintain consistency, which saves you from losing time tracking down issues due to small variations in stacks across environments. The BitNami project is all about making your life easier!

5.- Community.

The BitNami Stacks are released under the Apache 2.0 license and can be downloaded and used freely. There’s plenty of support available via the BitNami forums, where suggestions for improvements to the project are always welcome. If you have questions, compliments, ideas or suggestions for improvement, please stop by the forums and let us know.

Book review: Liferay Portal Enterprise Intranets

2008-08-18T09:10:23Z

Anu Sonia over at Packt publishing was kind enough to provide us with a review copy of Liferay Portal Enterprise Intranets

This book is a practical guide for a Liferay administrator providing step-by-step instructions on how to use the most important Liferay features such as user management, roles, blogs, wikis, communities, themes, and so on. It contains numerous examples and straightforward explanations which will be very helpful for beginners. The book follows a well defined structure that makes it easy to find the information that you are searching for.

Although the book explains how to deploy Liferay with Apache Tomcat server and HSQL in a quick start guide, we miss more details on how to configure Liferay to work with an existing alternate, preexisting server such as JBoss, Glassfish or Jetty and of course a reference to mod_jk and its replacements. There is a section covering how to connect with MySQL but more information on other commonly used alternatives such as such as PostgreSQL or Oracle would have been good. As part of our work in BitNami, we are aware of many common setup errors. As a suggestion for future editions of the book we recommend providing a section covering ways of addressing them.

Another common topic among BitNami users has been how to tune performance of Java applications in general and Liferay in particular, including JAVA_OPTS settings.

The “Configuring Portal Paths” section was pretty interesting. It details how to change the default directory paths to Lucene or Jackrabbit, but we miss detailed information on how to change the default URL for the context with “portal.ctx” or the repository path with “resource.repositories.root”.

We particularly enjoyed the LDAP, Single sign-on and Alfresco sections. The book does an excellent job of explaining how to configure and integrate these technologies. It also covers upgrading Liferay through the Update Manager but is missing information on how to perform and restore backups.

Although we understand this book is targetted for beginners, we would like to suggest a chapter that explains the basic steps needed to develop a plugin for Liferay, so users have a starting point when they need to do.

Overall, the “Liferay, Portal Enterprise Intranets” book is a great practical guide for Liferay administrators, specially those that are just getting started. You can find useful howtos to configure and customize the base portal and the well designed book structure makes it easy to locate specific sections and topics. As mentioned earlier, what we would like to see in a future edition is more information on troubleshooting and tuning, configure alternate web servers and databases and how to create and restore backups.

The BitNami Team

SugarCRM on BitNami

2008-07-28T06:46:04Z

The last couple of weeks have been very busy ones here at BitNami. Not only did we update a bunch of already supported applications, such as WordPress, Joomla!, phpBB and Drupal, but we have created three new infrastructure stacks around PHP and PostgreSQL with (L|W|M)APPStack and added a new application to our ecosystem with BitNami JasperServer Stack.

Today, we are pleased to announce a SugarCRM Stack, which will join our growing stacks collection. As it is one of the most voted stacks in the poll, we think (and hope) you will really like it.

SugarCRM is a flexible customer relationship management solution for companies of all sizes. SugarCRM can easily be customized and integrated with other software to allow companies to build and maintain a more flexible system. Core functionality includes sales force automation, marketing campaigns, support cases, project management and calendaring.

SugarCRM makes CRM easy to use, and we make it even easier with our stack installer.

As a business, it makes it trivial to try out the application on your own. If you decide not to use the application, uninstallation is a piece of cake because BitNami Stacks are completely self-contained and will not interfere with other software installed on your system.

As always, a wide variety of platforms are supported: Linux, Windows, OS X and Solaris.

The installer is available as a standalone installer, as a module to be added to an existing (L|W|M|S)AMPStack and last but not least it is also available on Rightscale to easily deploy your SugarCRM instance in the cloud.

Your feedback or comments are more than welcome in our forum.

BitNami Mentions Roundup

2008-07-24T09:44:19Z

We have put a lot of effort in building BitNami from the ground up, and it is a great satisfaction learning that it is useful to others.

We got mentioned in the past in LifeHacker and it seems the editors continue to use our MediaWiki stack themselves

Mike Gunderloy over at OSTATIC reported on our modularization efforts as did John Conroy at CMSWire . Ross McKillop created a detailed step-by-step guide complete with screenshots on how to install WordPress on Vista and Mike Jennings comments on his experience getting started with BitNami

Users at RealSoftware forums discovered another use of BitNami: quickly and safely trying different bug tracking software while Codeka developers learned how to install their app on top of BitNami

We have been gladly surprised at how widely BitNami software has been adopted all around the world (over 150 countries!) in such a short time period. You can check out blog the coverage that we got recently in German (danke!) and the video tutorial on how to install WordPress.

Apache, PHP and PostgreSQL. All-in-one!

2008-07-29T10:09:27Z

We are happy to announce the release of a new set of Infrastructure Stacks: LAPPStack, MAPPStack and WAPPStack. These stacks provide an easy to install distribution of Apache, PostgreSQL, PHP and supporting libraries. The user-friendly installer allows users to quickly install and configure a PHP-PostgreSQL platform on Linux, Windows and OS X.

PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source relational database system. It has more than 15 years of active development and a proven architecture that has earned it a strong reputation for reliability, data integrity, and correctness.

If you’d like to work with us on the BitNami project, get support or just give your opinion, please pay a visit to the BitNami forums. We’d love to hear which applications you would like to have packaged to run on top of the new PHP and PostgreSQL-based stacks.

Apart from the fact that the stacks can be installed in minutes with just a few clicks, they also include phpPgAdmin, a management tool for PostgreSQL, to make administration tasks even easier.

If you’d like to download the new, PostegreSQL-based BitNami Infrastructure Stacks, visit: http://www.bitnami.com/stacks

Another popular open source application in BitNami: JasperServer

2008-07-16T13:33:19Z

At BitNami, we always try to provide you with top open source applications that can be useful for you. In this case, we’re glad to announce the release of the BitNami JasperServer Stack, which bundles JasperSoft’s JasperServer (http://www.jaspersoft.com/JasperSoft_JasperServer.html) and its needed dependencies (Apache Tomcat, Java and MySQL) in yet another easy to use installer for Windows, Linux and OS X.

JasperServer is one of the most popular open source applications to create and interact with reports. Quoting from their website,

JasperServer is a high-performance report server and business intelligence platform designed for developers and businesses. Deploy JasperServer when:

* Users need to create their own ad hoc queries, reports, charts, crosstabs, and dashboards.
* It becomes necessary to securely store, schedule, distribute, share, drill-down, or interact with reports.

JasperServer includes: a secure report management repository, standards-based report definitions using JasperReports, embedding and integration interfaces, and the iReport graphical report designer.

So you know, if you need a powerful reporting tool, go get BitNami JasperServer Stack. It won’t disappoint you!

Tracks screencast: How to get things done

2008-07-14T17:51:39Z

Recently a new version of Tracks was released (download). This was a good reason for us to take a closer look at this great application that implements David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology.

Managing your tasks and time isn’t always that easy, therefore getting things done results to be even more difficult. Tracks tries to help you organize better and do things properly.

With the support of Bsag (the creator and developer of Tracks) we have put together a short introduction on how to install and use Tracks. This way you can get started with this great application in no time.

Let’s get things done!

Tracks Installation

Tracks Primer (Source: http://www.rousette.org.uk)

Tracks: Aprende a manejar tus tareas

2008-06-27T15:29:39Z

Se ha lanzado recientemente la versión 1.6 de Tracks, así que hemos actualizado nuestra stack, y de paso echado un vistazo a esta magnífica aplicación que implementa la metodología ‘Getting Things Done’, de David Allen.

Debajo de este párrafo encontraréis cómo instalar fácilmente Tracks usando el instalador de BitNami (muchas gracias a Javier Martínez por el vídeo). El segundo screencast es una traducción realizada por nosotros del vídeo oficial de Tracks, disponible en la página de la aplicación, y realizado por Bsag, creadora y desarrolladora de Tracks, a la que también tenemos que agradecer el esfuerzo de grabar el vídeo original.

BitNami Modules. As an user... I want integration

2008-07-18T10:27:52Z

One of the best features of BitNami Stacks is that they are easy to install. This allows users to quickly and easily deploy their favorite open source software regardless of the operating system they are running. BitNami Modules take simplicity a step further by enabling you to easily plug-in additional applications that will automatically run on top of the BitNami platform.

With BitNami Stacks, you get everything that you need to run for each application you install – each stack is a complete, independent runtime. In many cases, a BitNami Stack may be just what you need. In others, you may want to run all of your applications on top of the same stack. This may be because you want to centralize the administration tasks, or maybe you don’t want to run multiple Apache or MySQL instances in the same server. This is where BitNami Modules come in. They enable you to integrate and run several applications on top of one open source stack / runtime. The BitNami system allows you to share basic user and system data across applications, as well as easily see which applications and versions are installed and running on your system. This integration will be expanded significantly in later versions.

Let’s take a look at what you can do with BitNami Modules.

Imagine you’re someone without much experience in the world of programming and system administration and you’d like to have your own wiki. [Of course, the below also applies to those with the know-how, who just don’t want to bother with installing everything manually.] To get started:

Go to www.bitnami.org and take a look to all the BitNami Stacks and BitNami Modules.

You can choose:

a) A BitNami Stack for each application you want to use.
b) The BitNami Platform (BitNami LAMPStack if you are using Linux, or MAMPStack, WAMPStack or SAMPstack if you are using Mac, Windows or Solaris) and the set of BitNami Modules of your choice. Each Module includes a ready-to-plug application that will automatically be installed and configured to run on top of your BitNami Platform installation. You can add several BitNami Modules to one BitNami Platform installation, so all of the resources are shared between the applications.

You want a wiki, but..which one will work best for you? The best way to find out is to give them a try. BitNami Modules are as easy to uninstall as they are to install. Just like BitNami Stacks, they are completely independent. Although they run on top of the same platform, each module is completely separate from the others. Modules can be installed or uninstalled without fear of interfering with the other modules that you have running.

Suppose that you want to deploy BitNami software in your company. You may also need a Content Management System, a Forum, a news system. You tried BitNami on Windows but the server runs Linux. No problem! You can go to BitNami and get all of the same applications for a different platform. The installation process and software versions will be the same across any BitNami-supported operating systems.

The best way to understand how BitNami Modules work is to give them a try. Currently, BitNami Modules are only available for PHP applications. Download your BitNami LAMPStack, MAMPStack, WAMPStack or SAMPStack. Try the different modules available on BitNami. And remember, uninstalling them is just as easy as installing, so if you don’t like one of the applications, you can just remove it.

We’d really like to get your feedback on this new addition to BitNami. What do you think of BitNami Modules? Do you prefer the the modular architecture, or the self-contained stacks? Please leave your comments in our forum and help us improve BitNami.

New RubyStack released

2008-06-19T14:13:10Z

A new version of BitNami RubyStack has been released!

This version includes ready to run versions of two popular projects for Rails developers:

Git, an open source version control system designed to handle very large projects with speed and efficiency
Nginx, a lightweight HTTP and proxy server server (currently only included in OS X and Linux stacks)

In addition to the above, with this new version you can enjoy new and updated gems, right out of the box, including:
thin: is a web server that brings together mongrel parser, event machine and rack.
rack: a minimal interface between web servers and Ruby frameworks.
eventmachine: a network I/O library with extremely high scalability, performance and stability.
god: is a tool that monitors various attributes of running processes and can start/restart/stop them under certain situations.
beanstalk-client: A Ruby client library for the Beanstalk protocol.
webrat: lets you quickly write robust and thorough acceptance tests for a Ruby web application.

and many more…

You can download RubyStack at http://www.bitnami.org/stack/rubystack In less than a 5 minutes you will have a complete Rails environment with Apache, PHP and MySQL on Windows, Linux and OS X

You can join our community and leave your feedback in our RubyStack forum

http://bitnami.org/forums/forums/20

New BitNami eZPublish Stack

2008-06-15T18:35:55Z

Recently we have released a new BitNami featured stack that makes it easier than ever to have your own customized web application. The most important feature of this great software are the customization possibilities that it offers.

eZ Publish is not just a CMS software, it is a framework to develop web applications. The base features allow you to easily create a site according to your needs, from a personal homepage to an e-commerce site.

The BitNami eZPublish Stack besides bundling eZ Publish software, provides you with the whole environment you will need to run it. The current version includes the Apache HTTP Server 2.2.8, PHP 5.2.6 and MySQL Database Server 5.0.51.

You just need to download, run the installer and a few clicks later you will able to to create your own customized site. You can give feedback or ask for help in the eZ Publish subforum.

Trac 0.11 on Windows with the BitNami Trac Stack

2008-06-12T07:38:51Z

To get Trac 0.11 working on top of the BitNami Trac Stack for Windows, you need to do the following:

Launch the command line console (Start Menu -> Run -> type cmd)
Change directory to your Trac installation.
Load the environment variables by typing “scripts\setenv.bat”
Change directory to python\Scripts
You can install trac 0.11 by typing “easy_install http://svn.edgewall.org/repos/trac/branches/0.11-stable” from the console
Stop the servers using the Start Menu shortcut
Copy the folders DLLs and Lib from python\ to apache2\bin
Restart the servers
The last step is typing from python\Scripts ‘trac-admin “(PATH TO THE INSTALLATION)\projects\(NAME OF THE PROJECT)” upgrade’, substituting PATH TO THE INSTALLATION and NAME OF THE PROJECT accordingly.

That’s all :)

Cheers

PS: We’re waiting for the final version of Trac 0.11 to make the new version of the stack

phpBB3 now in BitNami

2008-06-10T13:29:04Z

After a long waiting period of about 2 years, this April phpBB3 vas released. This version offers a new default theme, enhances the administration control panel with a modular design and provides support for a great variety of databases. phpBB2 will remain actively maintained by the community, due to its widespread adoption.

Here in BitNami you can find easy to install versions of phpBB3 and phpBB2. You can easily compare both versions by yourself by downloading and installing the latest BitNami phpBB Stacks from http://bitnami.org/stack/phpbb. After installing the BitNami phpBB Stack you will have a running version of Apache, PHP and MySQL working together with phpBB.

You can find them for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. phpBB3 is also available for Solaris.

Try it, discover the new features in phpBB3 and leave your comments in our phpBB forum at http://bitnami.org/forums/forums/14

Trac for Windows released

2008-06-02T16:01:38Z

It’s been hard work, but we are glad to announce that the BitNami Trac Stack (http://www.bitnami.org/product/trac) finally supports Microsoft Windows :)

Quoting from the Trac website (http://trac.edgewall.org),

Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. Trac uses a minimalistic approach to web-based software project management. Our mission is to help developers write great software while staying out of the way. Trac should impose as little as possible on a team’s established development process and policies.

It provides an interface to Subversion, an integrated Wiki and convenient reporting facilities.

Trac allows wiki markup in issue descriptions and commit messages, creating links and seamless references between bugs, tasks, changesets, files and wiki pages. A timeline shows all project events in order, making the acquisition of an overview of the project and tracking progress very easy.

The stack bundles and installs Trac and all its dependencies to make it easy as a cake to start using one of the most powerful and well-known open source bug tracking applications. To be precise, it includes:

Apache 2.0.63
Python 2.4.4
mod_python 3.3.1
Subversion 1.4.6
SQLite 3.5.2
Clearsilver 0.9.4
PySQLite 2.4.1

Apart from copying the needed files, the installer itself is able to create your own Subversion repository and link it to a project (also created by the installer!) so everything will be ready to run by the time you click the ‘Finish’ button.

We hope you enjoy the installer and that it makes your life easier by taking care of installing everything (which can be a real pain, believe us) for you. You can give feedback or ask for help in the Trac subforum, at http://bitnami.org/forums/forums/18

The BitNami Team