Installing Glassfish 3.1 on headless Centos 5.5

i run into some problems installing glassfish on a centos server without X-Windows. You can use the glassfish installer, but actually just unzipping the glassfish-zip is the easier method.

Method 1: Installing just with a zip file (easy method)

1. you have to get a java sdk and install (i used the rpm provided by oracle)
2. get the glassfish zip-file install package

3. to install the glassfish server, just unzip it in the directory you want. For example for /opt

cd /opt
wget http://download.java.net/glassfish/3.1.2/release/glassfish-3.1.2-ml.zip
unzip glassfish-3.1.2-ml.zip

4. configure the jdk in file /opt/glassfish3/glassfish/config/asenv.conf, add the line AS_JAVA=[pathtoyourjdk]

AS_JAVA=/opt/jdk1.6.29

5. check your /etc/hosts file. There HAS TO BE a entry with your hostname pointing to eth0
(eg. if eth0=192.168.123.3, then you need a line like this
192.168.123.3 centsrv.example.com centsrv

otherwise you will get the error “There is a process already using the admin port 4848 – it probably is another instance of a GlassFish server.”

Method 2: Installing with the Glassfish Installer

loli (local linux box) you need X-Windows running there of course
centsrv (remote centos server without X11)

1. you have to get a java sdk and install (i used the rpm provided by oracle)
2. get the glassfish install package for linux
3. install the xauth package (e.g. yum install xorg-x11-xauth) without it you can’t with ssh X-forwarding
4. connect with X forwarding to centsrv: ssh -X root@centsrv
5. now simply start the glassfish setup, the graphical installer will start on your local linux machine (loli) but it will run on the server centsrv. i installed glassfish under /opt/glassfish3
6. check your /etc/hosts file. There HAS TO BE a entry with your hostname pointing to eth0
(eg. if eth0=192.168.123.3, then you need a line like this
192.168.123.3 centsrv.example.com centsrv

otherwise you will get the error “There is a process already using the admin port 4848 – it probably is another instance of a GlassFish server.”

First steps

Start the glassfish-server

/opt/glassfish3/glassfish/bin/asadmin start-domain

Now go to the admin console http://[yourdomain].com:4848/

to upload the first webapplication

The logfiles for the default domain domain1 are located in /opt/glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1/log/