Carl Mercier's blog

Running Merb on JRuby 1.2 and Glassfish 2.1

30 March 2009 By Carl Mercier 7 In Ruby, Technology

So I’ve been trying to get Merb running on JRuby a good part of last night. I don’t know jack about Java, so this has been a little bit more challenging than it should have been. Most (if not all) of the tutorials I found were old and obsolete, so I decided to throw out my very own.

I need to give credit to this page, without which I’d still be fighting with this whole thing.

This tutorial uses JRuby 1.2, Glassfish 2.1, Merb 1.0.10 and Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. To make my life easy, I simply fired an EC2 instance based on ami-71fd1a18. I recommend you do the same. However, it should work from just any vanilla Ubuntu 8.04.

Some important comments are in the script below, make sure to read them. Enjoy!

# Setup the scene
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
# this is the Corporate World, folks, you'll need to accept some license agreement in the next step
apt-get install -y vim-full build-essential git-core sun-java6-jdk ant
apt-get install -y mysql-server mysql-client

# Install JRuby
cd /tmp
wget http://dist.codehaus.org/jruby/1.2.0/jruby-bin-1.2.0.tar.gz
tar xzvf jruby-bin*
mv jruby-1.2.0 /opt/jruby
echo "export PATH="/opt/jruby/bin:$PATH"" >> ~/.bashrc
export PATH="/opt/jruby/bin:$PATH"

# By now, 'jirb' should start IRB on JRuby!

# Let's now install some gems
jruby -S gem install erubis rake json_pure rspec rack mime-types rubigen --no-rdoc --no-ri
jruby -S gem install hpricot --no-rdoc --no-ri --version '~>0.6.1' # version 7 doesn't work with JRuby as of now
jruby -S gem install merb-core merb-more --no-rdoc --no-ri

# Test to see if Merb is installed:
jruby -S merb help

# Create an Hello World app
cd ~
jruby -S merb-gen core hello_world
cd hello_world
jruby -S merb-gen controller hello
echo "<h1>This is a Merb app running on JRuby. w00t!</h1>" > app/views/hello/index.html.erb
# Freeze Merb into your app
jruby -S gem install merb-core merb-more --no-rdoc --no-ri -i gems

# Install Glassfish
cd /tmp
wget http://java.net/download/javaee5/v2.1_branch/promoted/Linux/glassfish-installer-v2.1-b60e-linux.jar
# and yet more licensing!
java -Xmx256m -jar glassfish-installer-v2.1-b60e-linux.jar
mv glassfish /opt/
cd /opt/glassfish
ant -f setup.xml

# Start Glassfish server, it might take some time.
./bin/asadmin start-domain domain1

# Warbler and friends
jruby -S gem install rails warbler activerecord-jdbc-adapter --no-rdoc --no-ri
cd ~/hello_world
jruby -S warble config

# Make sure frozen gems are included in your .war file.
# edit config/warble.rb and add "gems" to the config.dirs line

# create some missing directories, otherwise, warble will complain.
mkdir -p lib log vendor
# create a .war file
jruby -S warble war
# copy it to Glassfish.
cp hello_world.war /opt/glassfish/domains/domain1/autodeploy/

# Glassfish finds your app and starts it automatically.  Give it a few seconds.
# Then, go to http://{server-ip}:4848
# User: admin    Pass: adminadmin        Sounds like a good idea to change this for production!!!!!
# Click "Web Applications", then "hello_world".  Change "Context Root" to "/" and Save.  Saving was slow for me.

#
# That's it!!!
#
# Now go see your l33t web 2.0 app in action:
# Go to http://{server-ip}:8080/
# and http://{server-ip}:8080/hello

deployment, glassfish, java, jruby, merb, rails, ruby, rubyonrails

A dream setup: THREE monitors on a Macbook!

16 February 2009 By Carl Mercier 14 In Cool/funny/stupid stuff, Technology

So you’ve always dreamed of connecting more than 1 external monitor to your Macbook (or any Mac) huh? Guess what, I just did it!

The process is not quite as straightforward as it should be, but it works pretty well.

The secret lies in a nifty application called ScreenRecycler. In a nutshell, it allows you to use a monitor connected to a second computer as an additional monitor to your main computer. So yes, you DO need 2 computers. The good news is that the second computer can be either Mac, Windows or Linux. The bad news is that it’s slightly slower if the second computer is not a Mac. My second box is running Windows and it’s very usable for e-mail and calendaring.

My setup consists of:

1 Dell 24″ 2405FPW (awesome monitor btw)
1 Samsung 22″ 2243BWX (vertical)
1 Unibody Macbook
1 custom-built PC

Screen configuration:

Main screen: Pretty much everything happens on this screen
Vertical screen (left): Mail.app (top), iCal (bottom)
Macbook screen: Twhirl, Corporate MSN Messenger, Adium

The -really- cool thing about my setup is that, if I ever need to use Windows, I can just stop ScreenRecycler and my Windows desktop appears on my left screen. Because I use SynergyKM (and this), I simply have to move my mouse to the left and my keyboard and mouse automatically start controlling Windows.

For your information, clicking the image will let you see my setup it its full glory!

macbook, monitors, screenrecycler, setup

StartupCFO interviews me

03 February 2009 By Carl Mercier 0 In Defensio, Presentations, Startup and business, Technology

Mark McLeod of StartupCFO interviewed me. We talked about startups, bootstrapping, lessons learned and the recent acquisition of Defensio by Websense.

Here’s the link… http://startupcfo.ca/2009/02/startup-lessons-interview-with-carl.html

bootstrapping, Defensio, exit, interview, karabunga

Running Merb on JRuby 1.2 and Glassfish 2.1

A dream setup: THREE monitors on a Macbook!

StartupCFO interviews me

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