Friday, April 27, 2012

New version of Jenkins, Upgrading your BitNami Jenkins Stack

Last week we announced the first version of our BitNami Jenkins Stack. This week a new Jenkins version was announced and we have already updated our stack. However, in some cases it is more convenient to upgrade the installation in place than re-installing. This post explains briefly how to upgrade a Jenkins installation manually.

The first step is to understand where the JENKINS_HOME variable is pointing to. That directory is where all your data is stored.

In BitNami we define JENKINS_HOME in the apache-tomcat/conf/Catalina/localhost/jenkins.xml file pointing to apps/jenkins/jenkins_home. If you want to upgrade Jenkins keeping your data, you just need to download the latest jenkins.war file, copy it in your apache-tomcat/webapps directory and restart Tomcat. It is recommended to create a backup of the previous jenkins.war file, just in case you find issues when upgrading.


On Linux and OSX you can execute the following steps to perform the above (notice that the installation directory is /opt/bitnami in the BitNami virtual appliances and BitNami Amazon Images):


$ cd <installation_directory>
$ ./ctlscript.sh stop
$ cp apache-tomcat/webapps/jenkins.war apps/jenkins/jenkins.war.bak
$ wget http://mirrors.jenkins-ci.org/war/latest/jenkins.war
$ mv jenkins.war apache-tomcat/webapps/
$ ./ctlscript.sh start


On Windows you can stop the servers from the Start Menu entry or using the graphical tool that you can find in your installation directory. Using the file explorer go to where you installed the BitNami Jenkins Stack. Copy the jenkins.war file from the apache-tomcat/webapps directory to apps/jenkins. Download the latest jenkins.war file and copy it in apache-tomcat/webapps. Now just start the server from the Start Menu or using the graphical tool.

Alternatively to the process above, you can download a new BitNami Jenkins Stack. You can install it to a different location (remember to stop the previous install so there are no port conflicts) and point it to your previous JENKINS_HOME path by editing the file  apache-tomcat/conf/Catalina/localhost/jenkins.xml.


Monday, April 23, 2012

Managing your BitNami Drupal installation with Drush

We are happy to announce a new version of BitNami Drupal Stack. This new version includes support for Drush. Drush is a command line shell tool and scripting interface for Drupal designed to make life easier for people who need to deploy multiple Drupal installations.

Thanks to Drush you can easily manage your Drupal modules, edit configuration settings or backup your sites from the command line.

To get started, you first need to load the right environment. This is done automatically when logging in to a virtual appliance or cloud image. If you installed Drupal on your desktop, you can do so by executing:

/path/to/bitnami-drupal-install-directory/use_drupal

and on Windows by clicking on Start Menu > BitNami Drupal Stack > Use Drupal Stack.

The following are example commands you can run after that:
  • Download and install a module, for example Content Construction Kit (CCK ) a popular plugin that allows adding custom fields to nodes using a web browser
          drush pm-download cck
    drush pm-enable cck
  • Export the Drupal database as SQL, for backup purposes
    drush sql-dump > drupal_backup.sql
  • Or you can backup everything, including your code, files, and database into a single file
    drush archive-dump default --destination=/backups/drupal_site.tar
  •  Set a variable, for example the site email address
    drush variable-set site_mail mail@example.com

More information can be found in the official Drush guide. Thanks to OpenMelva for their suggestions and feedback Drush and other aspects of our Drupal stack.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Continuous Integration with Jenkins and BitNami



If you are a developer, you are probably already familiar with Jenkins. Previously known as Hudson, Jenkins is an open source continuous integration server built with Java that supports building and testing virtually any project. It supports different SCM tools, can execute Apache Ant and Apache Maven-based projects as well as arbitrary shell scripts and Windows batch commands, can monitor executions of remote tasks and more. Hundreds of plugins are also available that you can use for configuring your own system based on your specific requirements.


Today, we are happy to announce a first version of our BitNami Jenkins Stack. It includes Apache Tomcat 7.0.27 and the latest (and greatest) available Jenkins version, Jenkins 1.460. As always, you can get the native installers, virtual appliances and AMIs for the Amazon Cloud.



Here are a few notes on the default BitNami configuration:

- Jenkins is configured with Tomcat. For starting Tomcat you can use our Graphical Manager Tool or the ctlscript.sh utility both included in the installation directory (the installation directory is /opt/bitnami in Virtual Machines and AMIs). On Windows, Tomcat is installed as a service and it will automatically start at boot time.

- The JENKINS_HOME variable will point to apps/jenkins/jenkins_home in your installation directory.

- We configure the stack with the standard security setup. The access control is Jenkins's own user database as security realm and we use the Project-based Matrix Authorization Strategy. During the installation process, you will be prompted to enter the administrator user credentials, which by default will be user/bitnami in Virtual Appliances and AMIs. Notice that Anonymous login and user sign up are disabled. After login, you can easily change these settings through the Jenkins Web interface.




If you haven't had the chance to take a look at Jenkins yet, you no longer have an excuse! We know that you will find Jenkins to be a great and flexible is tool, both in the web interface and the APIs it provides. We would like to hear about your experience when trying BitNami Jenkins (good or bad) in any of its flavors (native installers, virtual machines or AMIs).

If you are already familiar with Jenkins, we would love to hear from you as well. We know there are lot of possible configurations with Jenkins and third party components and we would like to get your feedback on how to improve the BitNami Jenkins Stack.

BitNami Jenkins we will be very soon available in BitNami Cloud Hosting too!



Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Running BitNami in the Cloud with RHEL Presentation Available On-Demand



If you missed our joint webcast with Red Hat last week, you can now view it on demand. Tune in to see how to deploy BitNami apps using our RHEL-based AMIs in the Amazon Cloud and learn about the benefits of running Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the cloud.

If you would like more configurable deployments, automatic backups, built-in monitoring, one-click resizing and more, check out BitNami Cloud Hosting, which makes it easier to deploy and manage your favorite open source apps on RHEL and other platforms in the Amazon Cloud.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Join the BitNami Team!

If you are reading this post, you are probably already familiar with BitNami. We provide a library of free, ready to run open source applications that you can run locally or in the cloud. Our stacks have helped literally millions of developers and end users worldwide, from Fortune 500 companies to universities, governments and two-people teams building video games.

We are growing and we are looking for talented, passionate individuals to join our support team.

What your job will look like: You will be responsible for helping BitNami users get started with our apps and work with them to solve any setup and configuration issues they run into.

What we are looking for: Smart, inquisitive minds that have fun solving technical problems and genuinely enjoy helping others.

You should have outstanding communication skills and be comfortable setting up and configuring web-based applications in Linux/Unix. Some of the apps and frameworks we package include Joomla!, Drupal, WordPress, Redmine, Ruby on Rails and Django. You do not need to be an expert on all of them (or at least not at the beginning!) but you need to be proficient enough to help others and learn the technologies you are not familiar with quickly.

Having fun in Sierra Nevada!
We are headquartered in the US, but most of our development team is in Seville, Spain and Krakow, Poland. Ideally you would be located in one of these cities but we will also consider a remote position for the right candidate. You will need to be available to travel a couple of times a year for our company get-togethers (the latest ones involved snowboarding in the Spanish Sierra Nevada and four wheeling on the island of Tenerife, so the travel is not too bad :)

Ready to join the BitNami team? Send us your CV to careers@bitnami.org together with a brief cover letter telling us why you would like to join our team and sharing one example of a complex technical problem you solved and how you went about it.

PostgreSQL 9.1 with PostGIS 2.0 support in BitNami Stacks


We have been recently working to add support for PostGIS 2.0 in our PostgreSQL-based stacks. For the first release we have focused our efforts in LAPPStack Dev and MAPPStack Dev. These stacks also include Apache 2.4, PHP 5.4.0 and PostgreSQL 9.1.3. Together with PostGIS we have also added support for other PostgreSQL extensions. These are the available extensions on your databases:


You can check our PostGIS Quickstart guide for details how to use PostGIS 2.0 with PostgreSQL 9.1.

Over the next few weeks we will be adding PostGIS support to BitNami DjangoStack, the PostgreSQL module for LAMPStack and RubyStack as well as in BitNami Cloud Hosting. We would love to hear your feedback about this new addition to BitNami!

Monday, April 16, 2012

Help Drive Open Source Adoption by Taking a Quick Survey


We have teamed up with Black Duck Software, North Bridge Venture Partners451 Research and over  20 other collaborating organizations to introduce the 2012 Future of Open Source Survey – the results to be revealed on May 21st at Computerworld’s Open Source Business Conference (OSBC). 

This survey follows on the heels of a very successful five year survey that has sparked important discussions around open source adoption.  The survey is supported by working together to address broad industry initiatives that go beyond the scope of any one group.  Take the survey here to voice your opinion and hear leading ideas around:

·         Hot technologies - such as mobile and cloud - and geographic growth areas for OSS adoption
·         Why companies engage directly and strategically with OSS communities
·         Industry-specific trends such as the formation of super-communities - communities of communities - dominating the next phase of OSS adoption
·         Top up and coming open source companies and projects

The survey results will be available on May 21st to all respondents and by following discussion on Twitter @FutureofOSS and #FutureOSS.  Past survey results are available for viewing on the Future of Open Source Forum.

As an added incentive, all survey respondents will receive 20% off their pass to OSBC! 

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Exclusive Wordpress Add-ons and Support Discount for BitNami Users!



We have teamed up with WPMU, a very popular website for Wordpress developers, to get an exclusive, limited-time discount for BitNami users! We are excited to be able to bring you this special offer, which gets you a access to a treasure trove of over 300 Wordpress plugins and themes as well as support from the Wordpress experts at WPMU. You will save time and money with code you can rely on, and have the peace of mind that comes with having the most expert and experienced team behind you. It is like having your own private team of WordPress developers at your fingertips!

Don't miss out and take advantage of a HUGE 65% off of a full WPMU DEV membership - that is a savings of over $270!

Use this link to purchase a 1 year Elite subscription to WPMU DEV for $147 (a $420 value):


Act now, as this deal will expire on Sunday, April 15th!

This is the first time we are running this type of promotion. We would love to get your feedback on whether or not you would like to see more offers and discounts. Let us know what you think by emailing us at hello at bitnami dot org.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Learn How to Run Your Favorite Apps on RHEL on the Amazon Cloud



Back in February, we announced support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in BitNami Cloud Hosting and published several RHEL-based images (AMIs) for the Amazon Cloud in partnership with Red Hat. Next week, we are joining forces with Red Hat to present a webcast on how to get started with the BitNami RHEL-based AMIs on the Amazon Cloud. In the webcast, we will cover the benefits of deploying applications in the cloud, discuss a few real-world case studies on how others are using the cloud and show you how to use the Amazon Web Services console to launch and backup servers and more. Of course, we will also leave time to answer any of your questions related to BitNami, Amazon and RHEL in the cloud.

Date:  April 12, 2012
Time: 10 AM Pacific / 1 PM Eastern / 6 PM GMT

Sign up today for this free event!

UPDATE: This event is now available on-demand. Click here to view the recorded presentation.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

BitNami Stacks in Russian and New Features

We are happy to announce that we added support for a new language thanks to contributions from our community: Russian. We just released Russian versions for several of our stacks: WordPress, Drupal, Joomla! and Redmine.

 Russian BitNami Redmine welcome page

Russian Wordpress
These stacks also ship with SSL enabled by default. An SSL certificate gets automatically generated and configured in Apache during setup. Of course you will want to replace it with a real one from a certificate authority if you run it in production, the idea is to ease the task of getting SSL up and running in your server. We will be adding SSL support to the rest of stacks over the next few days.

We like to keep our stacks up to date. We have updated multiple components and libraries for our Linux and OSX stacks, including upgrading:
  • MySQL to 5.5.21
  • SQLite to 3.7.10
  • OpenSSL to 1.0.1
  • zlib to 1.2.6
  • OpenLDAP to 2.4.23
  • ImageMagick to 6.7.5
  • ...and more
We are looking to translate BitNami Stacks to more languages. If you would like to help, please check our wiki entry on translations and start translating in translate.bitnami.org. Thanks to Wjacheslav Wolski for the Russian translation!