Thursday, February 28, 2013

New BitNami contest winner: XOOPS

We are happy to announce the latest winner of the bi-weekly BitNami contest: XOOPS!

XOOPS is an acronym for eXtensible Object Oriented Portal System. Its object orientation makes it an ideal tool for developing small or large community websites, intra company and corporate portals, weblogs and much more.

We are working now to release stack installers for Linux, OS X and Windows, virtual machines already configured with XOOPS, Windows Azure cloud images and AWS cloud images. Stay tunned!

You can also vote for other projects or nominate another project that isn't yet on our list. Don't forget to ask others to vote for your favorite project so that it wins!


Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Django 1.5 now available in BitNami

We are happy to announce that  Django 1.5 has been finally released and it is already available in BitNami. After a couple of developer  preview versions we are finally able to bring you the latest stable version of Django,  ready to use.

In case you have been living under a rock, Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

If you are not familiar already with BitNami DjangoStack, it is a free packaging offering that simplifies the development and deployment of Django and Python applications. You can download a native installer or a virtual machine. If you prefer you can also launch a cloud image in the Windows Azure or in the Amazon Cloud. BitNami stacks simplify the deployment and testing of open source web apps and are an ideal method to test the latest releases of your favorite projects, including Django.

The biggest new feature in Django 1.5 is the configurable User model. Another important new feature is that GeoDjango now supports PostGIS 2.0, which is already bundled in the BitNami DjangoStack. GeoDjango makes it simple to create geographic Web applications, like location-based services. You can check our GeoDjango Quickstart guide for details on how to use GeoDjango with PostGIS 2.0 on BitNami DjangoStack.



 
This version of BitNami DjangoStack includes ready-to-run versions of Apache 2.2 with mod_wsgi 3.3, SQLite 3.7, MySQL 5.5, PostgreSQL 9.2 with PostGIS 2.0 (only of Linux and Mac OS X), Python 2.7 and Django 1.5.

But there are much more in this Django release, as you can see in the release notes for this version. Watch out for some backwards incompatible changes

Enjoy!

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

JRuby 1.7.3 released on BitNami, fixes security issues

Many popular runtimes and frameworks have been affected by serious security issues, including Ruby on Rails and Django. We have been issuing updated versions of those stacks affected. Now it is the turn for JRuby.

A critical patch update for Java SE and a new Java SE version were released recently to fix multiple security vulnerabilities.

BitNami JRuby Stack
JRuby has also released an updated version to address two address security issues. All users are encouraged to upgrade JRuby to 1.7.3.

BitNami JRuby Stack for JRuby 1.7.3 is already available. It provides free, all-in-one installers for Windows, OS X and Linux, virtual machines and cloud images for both Amazon and Azure clouds. It provides a self-contained JRuby environment which includes JRuby, Rails, Java, Tomcat and MySQL.

If you are a JRuby user, please do update as soon as possible.

Monday, February 25, 2013

The easiest way to test Ruby 2.0

Yesterday, the first stable version of Ruby 2.0 series was released. The date for this major release was carefully chosen by the Ruby development team to be Ruby's birthday, now turning 20 years old! We wanted to join this celebration by doing what we do best. Our present: providing you with the the easiest way to test Ruby 2.0 :)

Bitnami Rubystack provides free, all-in-one installers for Windows, OS X and Linux, virtual machines and Amazon machine images that provide a self-contained Ruby environment. It includes the Ruby runtime (of course!), Rails and a bunch of other commonly used third-party libraries and servers such as Rails, RVM, Imagemagick, MySQL, etc.  The packages will not interfere with your existing development environment and you can easily add/remove them at will. In fact, one of the preferred use cases for our stacks is to quickly test new versions of popular open source apps

Give it a try!

Thursday, February 21, 2013

New Django security issue, updated stacks

Yesterday the Django project released new versions of the project that fix important security issues. These new versions (1.4.4, 1.3.6 and 1.5c2) fix problems related to phishing, denial-of-service, information leakage and a range of XML vulnerabilities.

We have just released in BitNami updated stacks for all Django versions and we also upgraded all Django-based apps in our library.

         
       


You can find more information about the security issue at the official Django blog. If you already have installed a version of these applications please make sure that you update your environment or apply the appropriate patches.



Deploy PHP Apps to Heroku, Simplified

Despite some recent pr debacle around performance issues that were known but not documented, Heroku remains a good platform for getting started with PaaS. It is by far the most popular PaaS platform out there and allows you to develop scalable web applications without having to worry about managing servers, database clustering or other systems administration tasks.

Though initially a Ruby on Rails platform, Heroku now provides supports for virtually every major language and framework, including PHP, Python and Java. However, developing for Heroku in one of these other languages requires more work, particularly around setting up your development environment on Windows or Mac OS X. With our experience in providing instant development environments, we decided to put together a stack to make it easier to get started with Heroku with PHP (we plan to extend this to other languages). For those of you not familiar with BitNami, a 'stack' is a self-contained environment for a specific web application or development framework that you can install in your machine or launch as virtual machines or cloud images.

As of yesterday, we have added the Heroku client and extensions to our AMP (Apache/MySQL/PHP) and APP (Apache/PostgreSQL/PHP) Stacks, so you can have a complete PHP development environment setup for Heroku on your laptop or server in minutes. As with all of our self-contained stacks, the BitNami PHP development stacks are free and available as virtual appliances and cloud images as well as native installers for Linux, Windows or OS X. In addition to providing a PHP development environment, they also include a minimal ruby runtime and a ready-to-run Heroku client, so you have everything you need to start developing for Heroku. They are already fully configured so you can start developing as soon as you have one of them running on your machine.

To learn how to get started, check out our wiki entry, which walks you step by step through developing in PHP for Heroku. You will also need to download the BitNami Stack for your environment:

To develop for Heroku with PHP and MySQL, download the stack for your operating system:


To develop for Heroku with PHP and PostgreSQL, download the stack for your operating system:



After you have a chance to give one of the stacks a try, we would love to get your feedback - just post your thoughts on our Q&A site. Enjoy!

Discuss on Hacker News

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

New security fix for Rails

A new Rails security issue that affects all Rails versions (3.2.x, 3.1.x and 2.3.x) was recently announced, as well as a new JSON gem version that contains an important security fix.

We have updated all Ruby-based stacks in BitNami:


             

        


For more details about these security issues please check the information provided in the official Ruby On Rails blog. If you already have installed a version of these applications please make sure that you update your environment or apply the appropriate patches.

Welcome to the Newest BitNami Stack, Zurmo!

We are happy to announce a new member in the BitNami family: Zurmo. Zurmo is a new Open Source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) alternative that is mobile, social, and gamified.

Thanks to the community votes in our community contest, Zurmo was selected to be packaged as part of the BitNami Library. You can now download free, ready to run native installers for Windows, OS X and Linux, virtual machines and Windows Azure & Amazon EC2 cloud images.

Ray Stoeckicht, Co-Founder of Zurmo, was kind enough to answer some questions for those of you who may not be familiar with the project.


1. What is the goal of the Zurmo application?

To build the best open source CRM application in the world by focusing on engineering, quality of the technical infrastructure, and creating innovative feature arcs that will motivate users to use the system.

Zurmo dashboard
2. What are some of its features?

In this link you can find a list with the base features. 
Some unique differentiators include: 
- Gamification (increases user adoption)
- Social Conversations (keeps users engaged in the system)
- Full Testing Infrastructure (more stable and easier to handle upgrades, maintenance, and support)
- Fresh User Interface (increases user adoption)
- Built on a PHP Framework and other Development Platforms (most current technology)

3. Which projects or organizations are using it currently? What kind of projects do they use it for?

Zurmo can be used by anyone from a 1-person freelancer to a 100 user sales organization. As we build the feature set (http://zurmo.org/roadmap), it will become more and more geared towards larger, complex use cases, with many moving parts. The more integrations, high volumes of data, and customizations, the better Zurmo is positioned to handle the use case. We aspire to be the first open source CRM that can scale to the enterprise. Currently, we have a customer that uses Zurmo as the core system for centralizing millions of data points and running the company's entire operations. We also have a rugby team in the UK that uses Zurmo for activity management and sales force automation.

4. What do you expect will be the main benefits of having BitNami packages available for Zurmo?

The main benefit of having Bitnami packages available is that it makes it easy to try out Zurmo and get it up and running without having to worry about the system setup. The ease of installation is something that will benefit any user that wants to get started, and it will also allow existing users to pull down the latest version in order to test new features. We are extremely excited to be a part of the extensive BitNami library.

We are glad Zurmo is now part of BitNami. Would you like your favorite app to be part of BitNami? Be sure to suggest and vote for it in our contest!

Monday, February 18, 2013

GitLab Coming Soon - Which Project Will be Next?

GitLab
For several weeks, GitLab, a free project and repository management application, was close to winning our bi-weekly contest. This time, it won and GitLab will be soon added to the BitNami Library. As with all BitNami apps, we will provide free installers, VMs and cloud images for the Amazon and Windows Azure clouds. Congratulations to the GitLab team!

Since we started our bi-weekly contest last December, we have added a wide variety of apps to the library based on your votes:
- TestLink, a test management application
- phpCompta, an accounting application
- Chyrp, a blog software
- Tiki a Wiki/CMS/Groupware application
- ResourceSpace, a digital asset management system
- Zurmo, a CRM (we plan to release it tomorrow!)
- OpenERP, an ERP system in which we continue working on

In this current contest round, which will be running for another week, several interesting projects are up for potential BitNami packaging. Currently, the top apps are:

- XOOPS a PHP based Content Management System for developing websites, intra company portals, corporate portals, and weblogs.

- eFront is a PHP based flexible eLearning 2.0 system.

- Discourse a Ruby on Rails based open source discussion platform created by the Stack Exchange (stackoverflow, serverfault, etc) guys.

If you prefer one of these, be sure to vote for it! You can also vote for other projects or nominate another project that isn't yet on our list. Don't forget to ask others to vote for your favorite project so that it wins!


Friday, February 15, 2013

BitNami Apps Now in the Mac App Store


At BitNami, our goal is to make it easy to run your favorite server applications on any platform you choose. As you know, we already provide free native installers, virtual appliances and cloud images for over 60 of the most popular open source apps. Today, we are excited to announce a new way to get your favorite BitNami apps - the Mac App Store!

That's right - the first set of BitNami Apps is now available directly in the Mac App Store, so you can install and manage BitNami Apps right through that interface. All of the BitNami Apps in the Mac Store are completely free and come with a graphical management tool for stopping and starting the servers and more. The following applications are currently available in the Mac App Store, with more to come:



WordPress: WordPress is one of the most popular web publishing platforms available, used on millions of sites around the world.





DrupalDrupal is a content management platform that allows an individual or community of users to easily publish, manage, and organize a wide variety of content on a website.




MAMP:  BitNami MAMP Stack greatly simplifies the development and deployment of PHP applications. It includes ready-to-run versions of Apache, MySQL, PHP and phpMyAdmin and required dependencies.




Joomla! Joomla! creates multiple format sites from simple websites to complex corporate applications and allows users to manage each aspect of their website through a simple, browser-based interface.




The Mac App Store BitNami Apps are a great way to set up development environments, check out the latest versions of your favorite apps, and even run apps in production. If you enjoy using the apps, the best way to thank us is by rating the apps and leaving helpful comments in the App Store. Enjoy!

Friday, February 8, 2013

More BitNami Apps Available for Azure!


Last month, we announced that several apps from the BitNami library were made available for the Windows Azure cloud computing platform. We are happy to report that a new batch of BitNami applications was just released for Azure, so you can get the same easy deployment you expect from BitNami on Microsoft's cloud. The following new apps are now available:
Haven't signed up for Azure yet? Microsoft offers a free 90 day trial of Azure, so head over and give it a try!

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Drupal with Apache Solr

Apache Solr is a search platform that can be used as a replacement for core content search and provides extensive features and excellent performance. An increasingly popular use case for Solr is integration with the Drupal content management system. With BitNami Drupal and BitNami Solr stacks, it is very easy to configure Drupal to use the Apache Solr search engine.

BitNami Drupal already ships the Apache Solr Search Integration module. If you are using your own Drupal installation, install this module before continue.

Once you have Drupal running with the Solr module, the next step is to setup a server for Apache Solr. You can install it in the same machine or in a different machine, which is probably a good idea to improve performance.

Download and install BitNami Solr Stack. You can download free installers for Windows, Linux or OS X, download a virtual machine or deploy a cloud image already configured for Windows Azure and Amazon Web Services. It is important to use a compatible version with the Apache Solr Search plugin for Drupal. At this moment it is not compatible with Solr version 4, so make sure that you download version 3 (the latest stable version is 3.6.1).

Once the Apache Solr server is running, you can see something similar to this.

Apache Solr version 3.x
To configure the Solr server properly for Drupal, copy the schema.xml and solrconfig.xml files from the Solr Search module. You can find these files in the "drupal_application directory/sites/all/modules/apachesolr/solr-conf" folder. Copy these files into the "solr_installation_directory/apache-solr/solr/conf" directory and restart the Solr server.

$ cd solr_installation_directory
$ ./ctlscript.sh restart solr

In the Solr admin panel, you should now see something like  "drupal-3.0-0-solr3". If this is the case, everything is ready on the Solr side.

Note that Solr is running in the 8983 port by default. If you are using a BitNami virtual machine or a cloud image check that this port is open and accessible from the Drupal machine. You may need to change your firewall settings for this.

Now, it is time to configure the Drupal application. Go to "Modules", "Search toolkit" and enable both Apache Solr framework and Apache Solr search.

Apache Solr module

Click on the "Modules", "Solr Search Framework" configuration button and add a new connection:

URL: http://Solr_IP:8983/solr
Name: Remote Solr

Then, test the connection. If it is not able to contact the Solr server, check that the IP address is correct and the 8983 port in the machine running Solr is reachable. 

Now, configure the Drupal application to use Solr by default. Go to "Configuration", "Search settings" and enable Apache Solr search in the default search modules. If you have already content in your Drupal installation, you can re-index your site from there. This could take some time depending on the size of your existing content. 

That's it! Test the setup trying to use the search block in your site to see the results. If you run into  problems, feel free to ask any questions in the BitNami Q&A site and we will do our best to help you.




Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware now available in BitNami

Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware is a Wiki, CMS & Groupware written in PHP and maintained by an active and international community of volunteer contributors.

Thanks to the community votes, this application was a winner of the BitNami bi-weekly packaging contest. You can now download free, ready to run native installers for Windows, OS X and Linux, virtual machines and Amazon EC2 images.

Greg Martin, from Tiki community, helped us during the build process and he was kind to answer some questions about the project:


1. What is the goal of the Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware application?

A full-featured, free and open source, multilingual, all-in-one Wiki+CMS+Groupware written in PHP. 

2. What are some of the features?

Major features include articles, forums, newsletters, blogs, file and image galleries, wiki, bug and issue trackers (form generator), calendar, RSS feeds, category system, tags, advanced permission system for users and groups, and more.

3. Which projects or organizations are using it currently?

Tiki has been downloaded over 1 million times. All kinds of organizations, large and small use Tiki. Many are Intranets and not visible to the public but our "featured Tiki" permits to see all kinds of examples of publicly accessible sites.
4. What do you expect will be the main benefits of having BitNami packages available for Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware?

While not particularly complicated for those with experience, web applications offer a fairly high barrier to entry for the normal person.  Having the application stack packaged for simple install lower the barriers to getting Tiki running and allows one to focus strictly on customizing Tiki for their specific needs.

We are glad Tiki is now part of BitNami. Would you like your favorite app to be part of BitNami? Be sure to suggest and vote for it in our contest!

Monday, February 4, 2013

BitNami Tomcat Stack now with phpMyAdmin

Tomcat stack icon

We have recently released an update for the BitNami Tomcat stack which includes the latest version of Tomcat, 7.0.35. Per popular demand, we now include phpMyAdmin, the popular MySQL admin tool.


For those of you not familiar with it, BitNami Tomcat Stack simplifies the development and deployment of Java web applications. It includes ready-to-run versions of Tomcat, Apache, MySQL and all of its required dependencies. Our users have repeatedly asked us to bundle a good database management tool because it would make easier the development of Java web applications with MySQL as the database engine. We researched existing Java-based tools, but we did not find any that were comparable in quality and functionality to phpMyAdmin.

phpMyAdmin is a free software tool written in PHP, intended to handle the administration of MySQL using a web browser. phpMyAdmin supports a wide range of operations with MySQL. The most frequently used operations are supported by the user interface (managing databases, tables, fields, relations, indexes, users, permissions, etc), while you still have the ability to directly execute any SQL statement.


Table structure

SQL query


Including phpMyAdmin in our Tomcat stack means that we also needed to bundle a PHP runtime, but we believe the tradeoff was worth it. Enjoy!