Openbravo ERP with PostgreSQL 8.3 on Solaris 10 10/08

Solaris 10 10/08 (ala Solaris 10 Update 6) is now available. One of the new features of Solaris 10 10/08 is that PostgreSQL 8.3 is now bundled and available at /usr/postgres/8.3. I thought I will take this opportunity to help folks on how to use the new version on PostgreSQL using Openbravo ERP 2.40 as an example. (Note: This is specifically for Solaris 10 Update 6. If you are looking for instructions on how to install Openbravo and PostgreSQL on OpenSolaris check the other blog entry.)

First of all I recommend people to use the ZFS root feature now available in this update.  On my Sunblade 2000 I had to use the text installer via

boot cdrom - text

to install the system with ZFS boot.

Also another piece of recommendation is to put /var in a separate dataset. Why? Well all postgresql databases typically goes by default in /var/postgres  and hence to use the snapshot feature of ZFS, this provides a fine granularity.

Once Solaris 10 Update 6 is installed, then to see all options of Postgres available on Solaris 10 Update 6 do the following:

# svcs -a |grep postgres
disabled       Oct_31   svc:/application/database/postgresql:version_82_64bit
disabled       Oct_31   svc:/application/database/postgresql:version_82
disabled       Oct_31   svc:/application/database/postgresql:version_81
disabled       Oct_31   svc:/application/database/postgresql_83:default_64bit
disabled       Oct_31   svc:/application/database/postgresql_83:default_32bit

In my case I want to use a 32-bit instance of  PostgreSQL 8.3 so I just do the following.

# svcadm enable svc:/application/database/postgresql_83:default_32bit
# svcs -a |grep postgres
disabled       Oct_31   svc:/application/database/postgresql:version_82_64bit
disabled       Oct_31   svc:/application/database/postgresql:version_82
disabled       Oct_31   svc:/application/database/postgresql:version_81
disabled       Oct_31   svc:/application/database/postgresql_83:default_64bit
online         16:56:35 svc:/application/database/postgresql_83:default_32bit

Note when you do svcadm enable for any of the PostgreSQL instances, it first does an initdb and then does the equivalent of pg_ctl start. So only after the first enable of the service, you will see that the data directory initialized in /var/postgres/8.3/data (for 64-bit it will be data_64).

At this point of time I typically edit postgresql.conf located in /var/postgres/8.3/data/postgresql.conf and modify it for my basic tweaks:

checkpoint_segments=16 

shared_buffers = 128MB

wal_buffers=512kB

and then restart PostgreSQL server so the changes are incorporated before I start using the PostgreSQL server instance.

# svcadm restart svc:/application/database/postgresql_83:default_32bit

Great now PostgreSQL 8.3 server is up and running. Don't forget to use psql from  /usr/postgres/8.3/bin instead of the default /usr/bin which uses PostgreSQL 8.1 psql.

Lets now use an application on top of this new PostgreSQL server. Openbravo ERP 2.40 which was recently released also requires tomcat .

Now there are two versions of tomcat in Solaris 10 Update 6 (unlike OpenSolaris which has none by default and when you install it via pkg it is the latest version).  The two versions are the original Tomcat 4 and Tomcat 5.5.

/usr/apache/tomcat    - Tomcat 4

/usr/apache/tomcat55 - Tomcat 5.5 

For ease of use and Openbravo we want to use the newer Tomcat version.

so let's set the already bundled tomcat55 quickly as follows:

# cp /var/apache/tomcat55/conf/server.xml-example 
/var/apache/tomcat/conf55/server.xml

Openbravo ERP 2.40 requires ant to be 1.6.5 or higher.  The ant in /usr/sfw/bin in Solaris 10 Update 6 is still the original version  1.5.4.  I downloaded apache-ant-1.7.1-bin.zip from ant.apache.org  and unzipped it in /opt

Download the Openbravo ERP 2.40 Solaris (SPARC) installer available on its download site.

First of all if you are not logged in as root and use "su -" to root,  then using another terminal using the normal userid,  give X server display rights to root. As a short cut I use "xhost localhost"  to give permission to all users on localhost.

Then back as root

# chmod a+x OpenbravoERP_2.40-solaris-sparc-installer.bin
# DISPLAY=localhost:0.0; export DISPLAY
# ./OpenbravoERP_2.40-solaris-sparc-installer.bin

Here is my quick cheat sheet of answers for the questions that OpenBravo installation GUI asks (note the ones in bold are changed from default):

• /opt/OpenbravoERP


• /var/OpenbravoERP/AppsOpenbravo/attachments
  


• Complete


• Standard


• /usr/jdk/instances/jdk1.5.0


• /opt/apache-ant-1.7.1/bin/ant 


• /var/apache/tomcat55


• PostgreSQL


• /usr/postgres/8.3/bin
  


• localhost     5432


• (Enter password for postgres user as "postgres" twice)


• openbravo    tad     (Enter password for tad user  twice)


• Context name: openbravo


• Date format: DD MM YYYY, Date Separator -, Time format 24h, Time Separator :


• Demo data: Y or N depending on your preferences

After the information the installation GUI takes quite a bit of time
to complete specially if you select to load the demo data. (Hope you
made changes to PostgreSQL before to tune this loading.)

Notice that all user related data (PostgreSQL, Tomcat, Openbravo Attachments) are now going in /var. This allows us now to take a snapshot of /var to revert back to this installed image in case we accidentally corrupt user data or application settings.

Before taking the snapshot it might be a good procedure to make sure the database and tomcat is not running. Since we haven't started tomcat55 yet we only have to bring down PostgreSQL server.

# svcadm disable svc:/application/database/postgresql_83:default_32bit

# zfs snapshot rpool/ROOT/s10s_u6wos_07b/var@openbravoinstall

Once the installation completes  start tomcat as follows

# svcadm enable svc:/application/database/postgresql_83:default_32bit

# /usr/apache/tomcat55/bin/startup.sh

Once tomcat has completely started (depending on system it could be more than couple of seconds),  open a browser and go to

http://localhost:8080/openbravo

If
you see the login screen if everything goes right !. Use Openbravo as
username and openbravo (all lower case) as password to login and set it
up for your business.

If you want to rollback to this intial version just do:

# /usr/apache/tomcat55/bin/shutdown.sh

# svcadm disable svc:/application/database/postgresql_83:default_32bit

# zfs rollback rpool/ROOT/s10s_u6wos_07b/var@obenbravoinstall

# svcadm enable svc:/application/database/postgresql_83:default_32bit

# /usr/apache/tomcat55/bin/startup.sh

Once tomcat has completely started,  open a browser and go back to the browser and start again:

http://localhost:8080/openbravo

More help on installation is available on their wiki site.