Charity Beck of the Computer and Information Technology Center is now serving as interim manager of Central Web Support. Charity brings over 8 years of web development experience as well as 5 years of service to the CITC to the position. Charity can be contacted at 369-7440 or
cbeck@unt.edu .

Talking to a Coldfusion MX 7 Cluster with Apache2 (On Debian)

By Shannon Eric Peevey, UNT Central Web Support

In an effort to enhance the stability of our Coldfusion infrastructure, we are moving from a single Coldfusion server, to a Coldfusion cluster.  The following article is taken from my blog entry, http://speeves.erikin.com/newindex/?p=6, and documents the steps that were needed to configure Apache 2 to talk to the Coldfusion MX 7 cluster.  Enjoy!!

General Information

I am currently setting up ColdFusion MX 7 on Debian Sarge. The setup looks like:

Apache2 - front-end machine - 192.168.208.30

2-ColdFusion MX 7 machines clustered - 192.168.208.40/192.168.208.41

The cluster name is “webcf”.

I installed and setup the ColdFusion MX 7 cluster on two Debian Sarge machines with no problem, (ok, some problems, but it has been a month, so I don’t remember exactly what they were). Clustering was more of a pain, (come on Adobe… Let’s get more documentation on running ColdFusion clusters on JRun 4 servers). I’ll try to remember how I did it, so I can document that as well.

Configuring Apache2 and mod_jrun20

Finally, when I went to setup Apache2 with mod_jrun20.so, I ended up copying all of the /opt/jrun4 directory to the Apache2 machine. Therefore,

$ ls /opt/jrun4

$ jre/bin/java -jar lib/wsconfig.jar -host 192.168.208.40 -cluster webcf -apxs 

> -ws apache -dir /etc/apache2/ -v -coldfusion -bin /usr/sbin/apache2 

> -script /usr/sbin/apache2ctl

(Watch out that apache-dev is not installed… It is not needed for building mod_jrun20.so).

The java command above will probably generate the following error:

Found JRun cluster webcf at 192.168.208.40:2902

Found JRun server cfusion at 192.168.208.40:2902

Found JRun server admin at 192.168.208.40:2910

Found JRun server samples at 192.168.208.40:2918

Deleted directory /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1

Using Apache binary /usr/sbin/apache2

Using Apache control script /usr/sbin/apache2ctl

Parsing Apache configuration file /export/web/apache2/httpd.conf

Exec'ing chmod 777 /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1

Set permission to 777 on /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1

Server version: Apache/2.0.54

Exec'ing chmod +x /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1/build_jrun20

Set permission to execute on /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1/build_jrun20

Could not find the required apxs (Apache Extension Tool) binary /usr/sbin/apxs. 

Could not build A pache2 web server connector from source. 

Use build script /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1/build_jrun20 .

This is ok. Now:

$ cd /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1/

Open build_jrun20 in your favourite editor:

$ emacs build_jrun20

And change all instances of /usr/bin/apxs to /usr/bin/apxs2. Once this is complete, save the file and run:

$ ./build_jrun20

/usr/bin/libtool --silent --mode=compile gcc -prefer-pic -pipe 

-I/usr/include/xmltok -I/usr/inclu de/openssl -Wall -O2 

-DAP_HAVE_DESIGNATED_INITIALIZER -DLINUX=2 -D_REENTRANT -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=500 

-D_BSD_SOURCE -D_SVID_SOURCE -D_GNU_SOURCE -pipe -I/usr/include/xmltok 

-I/usr/include/openssl -Wa ll -O2 -pthread -I/usr/include/apache2 

-I/usr/include/apr-0 -I/usr/include/apr-0 -I/usr/includ e -w -c 

-o /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1/mod_jrun20.lo

...

cp /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1/.libs/mod_jrun20.so /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1//mod_jrun20.so

cp /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1/.libs/mod_jrun20.lai /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1//mod_jrun20.la

cp /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1/.libs/mod_jrun20.a /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1//mod_jrun20.a

ranlib /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1//mod_jrun20.a

chmod 644 /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1//mod_jrun20.a

libtool: install: warning: remember to run `libtool --finish /usr/lib/apache2/modules'

chmod 644 /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1//mod_jrun20.so

Now, I symlink the new so to /usr/lib/apache2/modules:

$ ln -s /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1/mod_jrun20.so /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_jrun20.so

Generate the load file to work with the Debian Apache2 package:

$ cat > /etc/apache2/mods-available/cfm.load

LoadModule jrun_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_jrun20.so 

Control-d to quit and save the cfm.load file.

(Or, use your favourite editor and put the following line in /etc/apache2/mods-available/cfm.load:

LoadModule jrun_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_jrun20.so

).

Now, enable your module:

$ a2enmod cfm

Restart Apache2:

$ /etc/init.d/apache2 restart ( or force-reload )