Java™ Application Development on Linux - Dator

466Chapter 20Open Source Web <strong>Application</strong> ServersSun. 18 We will take a quick walk through the installation of the ApacheGeronimo Java application server. Geronimo not only runs servlets and JSP,but it is also, as we shall see in later chapters, a J2EE EJB container, so theinstallation part of this chapter is important for using the examples andtechnologies covered in the remaining chapters.Geronimo is a complete application server. It provides a full, productionready,J2EE environment. It is the stated goal of the Geronimo project to passthe Sun J2EE certification tests. Such certification will, in all probability,quickly make Geronimo one of the most widely used J2EE application servers.A great deal of Geronimo information can be found on the GeronimoWeb site. 19NOTEAs of this writing, the project was just nearing the certification process. Only themilestone releases were available for downloading. By the time you read this,however, a fully certified version will likely be production-ready. There may beslight differences in the download and installation procedures. Be sure to followthe instructions from the Web site and any readme files for the most up-to-dateinformation.First off, you must choose what form of the product to download. Thechoice is really between a binary and source distribution. Within that choice,you can choose between two compression methods, zip or tar/gzip. While thefirst is typical for Windows distributions and the second for Linux, you canchoose either, as Linux has utilities for decompressing both. More importantly,the binaries are Java JAR files so they are not tied to a particular operating system.We will download and install a binary. Just click on the tar.gz filenameand save the file.If you haven’t read the previous sections because you were going to skipJBoss and just use Geronimo, please go back and read Section 20.3. It dealswith administration and privileges for setting up your installation, and you’llwant to know that for this chapter’s installation discussion, too.18. As of this writing, there was still a legal hurdle to overcome, since Sun requires derivativeworks to be branded and compatible, whereas the Apache license places no such requirementson its derivative works. This may be resolved by the time you are reading this.19. http://geronimo.apache.org/