Ruby 2.0 development environment for Windows

We are glad to announce a new release of BitNami Ruby 2.0 Stack, which is focused on improved Windows support.  

BitNami Ruby Stack provides a complete, self-contained development environment for Ruby on Rails for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. We offer one-click packages for each Ruby 1.8, Ruby 1.9 and Ruby 2.0.

BitNami Ruby 2.0 for Windows

With the latest version of Ruby in this package you can find the latest version of Rails. In order to avoid frustration when installing gems that require compilation,  we also include pre-compiled version of the most common gems like thin, eventmachine, mysql2, sqlite3 and rmagick. This is specially interesting on Windows when you don't always have a compilation environment set up. In any case, we also include DevKit on Windows in case you want to use other gems that need to be compiled.

Together with the minimum Ruby on Rails environment we include other components that you will likely use when developing a RoR application. On our Windows version you can find:

• Apache HTTP Server and thin and eventmachine pre-compiled gems for web deployment. 
• Databases: Sqlite3 and MySQL databases together with sqlite3 and mysql2 pre-compiled gems. 
• phpMyAdmin for MySQL administration.
• A graphical manager tool for managing the servers.
• ImageMagick and rmagick gem for image conversion.
• Source version control systems: Subversion and Git

In Linux version you also find NGINX web server and Varnish a web application accelerator. Apache is working with Pushion Passenger by default in this flavor.

You can take a look at our documentation to learn more about how to use BitNami Ruby Stack.

Join the BitNami Team! - We're Looking for a Sysadmin

Sysadmin? Love BitNami and the cloud?  Join our team and help build the future of application deployment in the cloud! 

As you may know, BitNami is the top provider of cloud application images for the Amazon Web Services Cloud, Windows Azure and the VMWare marketplace, with over 1 million new installations of our software every month. We are a Y-Combinator funded start up with offices in San Francisco and Europe. We are looking for a couple of top-notch system administrator to join our team.

You must have a solid understanding of Linux/UNIX, including performance tuning, high availability, security and TCP/IP networking. You should also be fluent in at least one major scripting language such as Python or Ruby. You should be as obsessed as we are with automation (i.e. Chef, Puppet) and excited to be working with the latest cloud technologies (we often work hand in hand with cloud vendors before they release major functionality). You have experience maintaining and scaling production systems and are intimately familiar with MySQL, Apache, NGINX, Rails, Django and other common open source servers and development frameworks.

We are looking with a candidate with Ms. Sc. in Computer Engineering but are aware that the best candidates sometimes come from different backgrounds. We are more interested in deep, demonstrable knowledge than in any specific degrees or certifications. 

You will be joining a growing, profitable startup and a great team of smart, hard-working developers. Our main engineering team is in Spain so ideally you are already living there or are willing to relocate to sunny Spain :)   We will also consider working remotely, but you may have to travel a couple of times a year to meet with the rest of the team.

If you are located in Spain, please apply through our InfoJobs offer (please indicate you read about it in our blog). If you are currently located abroad, email us your CV directly to careers@bitnami.com with a brief explanation of why you love BitNami, what you think you can bring to our team and links to open source projects you have created or contributed to (if any.)

Experimental 2.0.0 support in JRuby 1.7.4. BitNami JRuby Stack updated.

We are happy to announce a new release of BitNami JRubyStack which now includes JRuby 1.7.4.

We have also updated other major components of the Stack, including Tomcat 7 and Java 7, Rails 3, bundler and other useful gems. As with all BitNami Stacks, you can get the latest JRuby Stack for free as a native installer or virtual appliance. The cloud images for both the Windows Azure and the Amazon cloud will be available as well.

While the primary goal of 1.7 point releases is to fill out any missing compatibility issues with Ruby 1.9.3, JRuby 1.7.4 already includes experimental Ruby 2.0 support. JRuby 1.7 defaults to 1.9 mode, but it is both Ruby 1.8 & Ruby 1.9 compatible and both versions of Ruby are bundled in a single install. JRuby 1.7.4 also allows you to start testing Ruby 2.0.0. For more details about the new features, see the JRuby Release notes.

Here is how you can use the Ruby 2.0.0 mode in your BitNami JRuby Stack installation. You can also check our  quick start guide for getting started with BitNami JRuby Stack.

1. Open the BitNami JRubyStack console.

On Linux and Mac OS X open a terminal and go to the installation directory.
Then execute:

./jrubyconsole

On Windows use the entry in the Start Menu: BitNami JRubyStack —> Use BitNami JRubySTack

Once you are in the console execute:

jruby -v

The output you receive will include:

jruby 1.7.4 (1.9.3p392)

2. Ruby 2.0.0 mode just for this session

If you want to use Ruby 2.0.0 mode just for this session, but use the 1.9.3 mode as the default, just need to add the JRUBY_OPTS environment variable for this session.

On Linux and Mac OS X execute:

export JRUBY_OPTS=--2.0

On Windows:

set JRUBY_OPTS=--2.0

Now executing jruby -v will show:

jruby 1.7.4 (2.0.0) 

Notice that once you close the terminal this configuration will be lost.

3. Ruby 2.0.0 mode as default mode

If you want to set Ruby 2.0.0 mode as the default mode (so you don’t need to configure it every time) edit the environment settings for you BitNami JRubyStack by doing the following.

On Linux and Mac OS X edit the setenv.sh file that you can find in the scripts directory of your installation by adding the line:

export JRUBY_OPTS=--2.0

On Windows edit the setenv.bat file in the scripts directory of your installation by adding the line:

set JRUBY_OPTS=--2.0

Now if you open the BitNami JRuby Stack console (as explained above) and execute jruby -v you will see that you are working with the Ruby 2.0.0 mode.

Share Your Thoughts on the Future of the Cloud - Survey Closes this Week!

We have partnered with North Bridge, GigaOM Research and over 60 other companies to conduct the 3^rd annual Future of Cloud Computing Survey. We believe in the future of the Cloud, but there’s more to be learned and that’s why we continue to participate in this survey, which covers the following:

•       Where is the Cloud is making impact across the software eco-system (from computing and development to SaaS)?
•       IT competitiveness and the critical issues around balancing IT and Business Needs.
•       Drivers and inhibitors to Cloud Adoption
•       Software sectors and Industries that are being impacted by the Cloud

Our goal is to collect a broad range of responses that reflect the various levels of Cloud adoption from Infrastructure-as-a-Service to Platform-as-a-Service to Software-as-a-Service.

As a thank you from our partners at GigaOM Research, all respondents that provide an email will qualify to win one of five free one year-subscriptions to GigaOM  Pro (a $299 value).  And – you will automatically get a link to survey results in June when you take the survey and provide your contact information.

If you would like to see last year’s results, they are posted on Michael Skok’s blog. 

Roundcube now available in BitNami

Roundcube was the latest winner of the BitNami bi-weekly packaging contest and we are happy to announce that it is already available 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 Azure and Amazon EC2 images for Roundcube.

For those of you not familiar with this popular app, Roundcube is a modern webmail solution for managing your emails, similar to GMail, that you can host on your own servers. Some of its features include MIME support, address book, folder manipulation, message searching and spell checking.

You can also now launch a free cloud demo server with the BitNami Cloud Launchpad by clicking the launch button below. This server was configured with GMail by default. You can log in with a GMail account to start using it.

Thomas Bruederli, the Lead Developer and Project Administrator of Roundcube, was kind enough to answer some questions about his project.


1. What is the goal of the Roundcube application?

Roundcube aims to be a state-of-the-art webmail application that can be put on top of every standard email server and which is free to use and can easily be extended.

2. What are some of the features of Roundcube?

As the name states, the core features are everyday email reading and writing. For the use in corporate or institutional environments, Roundcube also integrates LDAP address books. Thanks to the plugin architecture one can choose from a broad variety of plugins that add further features such as calendar, task management, message filters or synchronization.

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

There are several American Universities using Roundcube for their campus or department email service, the largest deployment known is at University of Michigan serving 70K users. But also many internet service providers around the world meanwhile offer Roundcube by default for their paying hosting customers. Finally, Roundcube became the web client of the open source groupware solution Kolab which is a powerful competitor in the groupware market.

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

Although the installation of Roundcube is rather simple, having it packaged and pre-configured will hopefully make it even easier for people to give it a try. Since the Roundcube software is still pretty young and under heavy development, we also expect to open a proper update channel with the BitNami packages.


Would you like your favorite app to be part of BitNami? Be sure to suggest and vote for it in our contest!

Security fix for Ruby 1.9 applications

A new Ruby version was released recently to address a security issue.  There is a vulnerability in DL and Fiddle in Ruby where tainted strings can be used by system calls regardless of the $SAFE level set in Ruby.

We want to let BitNami users know that most popular Rails-based application installers, virtual machines and cloud images have been already updated and released to include a fixed Ruby version. We continue working on upgrading all of them for all platforms.

Ruby stack, Redmine, GitLab, Discourse, Tracks and Spree with Ruby version 1.9.3-p429 have been already released.

We have also taken this chance to upgrade several core components to their latest version, which we were already were in the process of releasing:

• Apache version 2.4.4
• Passenger version 4.0.2 
• phpMyAdmin version 4.0.0
• Perl version 5.16.3
• Mod_perl version 2.0.8 for Apache 2.4.4

We updated Ruby-based stacks for Linux and OS X platforms. We will update the Windows-based stacks soon. If you already have installed a version of these applications please make sure that you update your environment or apply the appropriate patch.

Django in the Mac App Store with BitNami

The Mac App Store is the simplest way to find and download apps for your Mac. BitNami Stacks provide a great way to deploy web applications and development frameworks. Django is a popular Python-based web development framework. What do you get when you combine these three items? ... Exactly! We are happy to announce that the latest version of BitNami Django Stack is now available in the Mac OS X App Store.

BitNami Django Stack provides a complete, self-contained Django development environment and greatly simplifies getting started with the development and deployment of Django applications. It includes ready-to-run versions of Apache 2.2.23, MySQL 5.5.28, SQLite 3.7.10, Python 2.7.3 and Django 1.5 and all the required dependencies.

The graphical tool included in the stack allows you to easily open the BitNami environment, manage the servers and  access the log files.

You can find more details in our documentation for BitNami Stack for Django in our Mac App Store section.







If you enjoy Django Stack, please help us spread the word by taking the time to rate the app and add a comment, we would really appreciate it.


If you run into any issues, or have any questions or suggestions, please let us know.

Deploy GitLab & GitLab CI in the cloud with BitNami

The GitLab CI application won recently the BitNami bi-weekly packaging contest. Our users chose it to be added to the BitNami library, just as with GitLab previously. GitLab CI is an open-source continuous integration server, closely integrated with GitLab.

As GitLab and GitLab CI have been designed to work together, we have decided to package both in the same GitLab BitNami stack. By launching a recent BitNami GitLab cloud image, (later than version 5.1.0-3), you will have access to both GitLab and GitLab CI. GitLab will be accessible at "/gitlab" and GitLab CI at "/gitlabci"

You can find below a step by step guide on how to perform full integration between them for a sample project. This integration consists on the ability of running a task from GitLab CI when an user makes a commit in a GitLab repository. To achieve that, please perform the following steps:

1. Add a project on GitLab.

Commiting on GitLab

2. Create a ssh key for the gitlab_ci user in this machine without a password. This key will allow GitLab CI to have read access to chosen repositories:

sudo su gitlab_ci -c "ssh-keygen -t rsa"

3. Add this key as "Deploy Keys" on the GitLab project. On GitLab, go to Projects -> BitNami sample project -> Settings -> Deploy Keys -> Add deploy key and paste the key generated previously and save it with any name you want.

4. On your personal machine start the repository as is described at GitLab. This step is not related to the integration with GitLab CI but the repository should be started to be able to perform the remaining steps.

5. Clone the repository with the gitlab_ci user on the GitLab server.

$ sudo su gitlab_ci
$ mkdir /opt/bitnami/apps/gitlabci/repositories
$ /opt/bitnami/git/bin/git config --global user.name 'Administrator'
$ /opt/bitnami/git/bin/git config --global user.email 'user@example.com'
$ cd /opt/bitnami/apps/gitlabci/repositories/
$ /opt/bitnami/git/bin/git clone git@<hostname_gitlab_server>:bitnami-sample-project.git"
Cloning into 'bitnami-sample-project'...

remote: Counting objects: 3, done.

Receiving objects: 100% (3/3), 201 bytes, done. remote: Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)

6. Create the project on GitLab CI by selecting 'Add project' on the GitLab CI application with the following parameters and saving it.

 - Name: bitnami-sample-project
 - Token: (blank)
 - Path: /opt/bitnami/apps/gitlabci/repositories/bitnami-sample-project
 - Follow branches: master
 - Scripts: ls

Once created, press "Details" because the "Project URL" and "Project Token" are required for the next step.

7. Enable GitLab CI on the repository created on GitLab. To do so, go to GitLab -> Projects -> BitNami sample project -> Settings -> Services -> GitLab CI. Select "Active" and fill "Project URL" and "Project Token" with the values from the previous step and press Save.

8. GitLab integration with GitLab CI is complete! To test it is working, just commit a new file from your personal machine. Then on GitLab CI you should be able to see something similar to the following:

GitLab CI running tasks when commiting on GitLab

BitNami Gitlab Stack provides a one-click install solution for GitLab. Download installers and virtual machines or run your own GitLab server in the cloud.

Faster, Leaner BitNami Stacks

Tens of thousands of people come to BitNami daily to download and launch their favorite applications and development environments. Our stacks include all the software required to work out of the box. This is convenient, but also means that stacks are bigger (our servers routinely deliver Terabytes of data) and take longer to install.  We are continuously investigating how to optimize and improve our stacks. We recently released Ruby-based stacks with important performance enhancements and today we want to announce that we have significantly improved the size and installation time of all of the BitNami stacks:

- Download size has been reduced up to 25%
- Installation time has been reduced up to 20%

The table below provides some examples demonstrating the improvements for specific stacks:

Honey, I shrunk BitNami!

BitNami Stack	Platform	Old Size (Bytes)	New Size (Bytes)	Reduced size (%)
Discourse	Linux	154093361	130738191	15%
Discourse	Linux 64bit	159344381	134155668	16%
Discourse	OSX	201518444	168480703	16%
Ruby stack	Linux	151606058	114763947	24%
Ruby stack	Linux 64bit	156942471	118022171	25%
Ruby stack	OSX	169405779	129635012	23%
Ruby stack	Windows	193101521	136704171	29%
Jenkins	Linux	191424884	143244029	25%
Jenkins	Linux-x86_64	187323355	140998975	25%
Jenkins	OSX	192062870	144819619	25%
Jenkins	Windows	211078764	145728200	31%

The table below shows the improvement in unpacking files time for different released stacks:

BitNami Stack	Platform	Old Time (secs)	New Time (secs)	Time reduction (%)
Discourse	Linux	86.26	72.49	16%
Ruby stack	Linux	86.17	69.62	19%
Ruby stack	Windows	92.92	70.33	24%
Jenkins	Linux	45.00	38.84	14%
Jenkins	Windows	55.37	44.08	20%

Over the next few weeks we will update all stacks to include the speed and size improvements. Some of the stacks that already include these optimizations are Redmine, Discourse, GitLab, Ruby stack, LAMP, MAMP, WAMP among others.

RoundCube: The Latest BitNami Contest Winner

Congrats to the RoundCube team! The RoudCube application is the new winner of the bi-weekly packaging contest. It has been chosen by our users to be added to the BitNami library.

RoundCube is like having your own private GMail: a browser-based multilingual IMAP client with an application-like user interface. It provides full functionality you expect from an e-mail client, including MIME support, address book, folder manipulation, message searching and spell checking.

RoundCube Webmail

As with all BitNami apps, we will provide free RoundCube installers, virtual machines and cloud images for the Amazon and Windows Azure clouds. 

Thanks to the community votes, we also recently released Horde Groupware Webmail in BitNami. Horde is a browser-based communication suite, where users can read, send and organize email messages and manage and share calendars, contacts, tasks and notes. If you are interested in a Webmail platform you can try Horde easily downloading the Horde Groupware Webmail installers, virtual machines or you can instantly launch a free cloud demo server.

Would you like to have your favorite app as part of BitNami? Make sure to suggest and vote for it in our contest!

BitNami Contest Update

A month ago GitLab, a free project and repository management application, was added to the BitNami Library after winning our bi-weekly contest. Last week the application chosen by our users was GitLab CI, an open-source continuous integration server closely integrated with GitLab. We are already working on it and we will soon provide you with free installers, VMs and cloud images for Amazon and Windows Azure. Congratulations to the GitLab team!

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

 RoundCube: "I'm a super-cool webmail!" is how RoundCube describes itself be in their Twitter account. It is a PHP based multilingual IMAP client with an application-like user interface. 

 OpenScholar: Built on the open-source framework Drupal, OpenScholar makes it possible to create academic web sites in a matter of seconds. Harvard University, University of California, Princeton University, State University of New York, University of California and more are already using it.

 Octopress: A blogging framework for hackers. You manage your site’s content from a git repository. Octopress is a framework designed by Brandon Mathis for Jekyll. 



If you would like one of the above to win, be sure to vote for it! You can also vote for other projects or nominate new ones not yet on our list. Don't forget to ask others to vote for your favorite project to increase its chances of winning!

Horde Groupware Webmail now part of BitNami

We are pleased to announce that Horde Groupware Webmail is now available on BitNami! Horde is an open source, enterprise-ready, browser-based communication suite. Users can read, send and organize email messages and manage and share calendars, contacts, tasks and notes with the standards compliant components from the Horde Project.

You can now download free, ready to run native installers for OS X and Linux, an Ubuntu-based virtual machine and Azure and Amazon EC2 cloud images.

You can also now launch a free cloud demo server with the BitNami Cloud Launchpad by clicking the launch button below.

Jan Scheneider, core developer and a founding member of Horde LLC 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 Horde Groupware Webmail application? 

We aim to provide the most flexible web based Groupware available. The strong points and the focus of Horde Groupware are: flexible integration with existing infrastructure, extensive configuration and customization options, strong support for standards.

Horde Groupware Webmail Edition dashboard

2.- What are the main features of Horde Groupware Webmail?


Some of the features of Horde Groupware include:

    Dynamic, basic and mobile interfaces
    Public and shared resources (calendars, address books, tasklists and notepads)
    Translated into 41 languages including right-to-left scripts and full unicode support
    Global tagging sytem
    Customizable portal screen including applets for weather, quotes, etc.
    Import and export of groupware data from other applications
    Synchronization with PDAs, mobile phones, groupware clients
    Strong integration, e.g. address book lookups in meeting planning, task due dates in calendar
    IMAP and POP3 webmail client
    Message filtering
    Message searching
    HTML message composition with WYSIWIG editor
    Quota support
    Keyboard navigation

You can check the main Horde Groupware Webmail features at http://www.horde.org/apps/webmail and http://www.horde.org/apps/groupware

3. Which projects or organizations are using Horde Groupware Webmail currently?

Horde is especially strong in academic and hoster environments. You can find important companies and organizations at the Horde's deployments page like SAPO Mail (Portuguese ISP), Versatel.nl, University of Michigan, Columbia University and more.

4. What are the benefits for Horde Groupware Webmail to be available as BitNami stack installers, virtual machine and Azure & Amazon cloud images?

BitNami stacks make it easier for new users to get started with Horde Groupware Webmail. It also simplifies to test new versions or run the application in the cloud easily.


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