Java™ Application Development on Linux - Dator

20.8 Installing Geronimo46720.8INSTALLING GERONIMOUsing a platform-neutral system like Java has both advantages and disadvantages.A disadvantage is that, generally, Java products don’t use the traditionalinstallation mechanisms of your native platform. For Linux users that meansthat with Java you don’t install using an RPM or a DEB. But this is somewhatoffset by the fact that all a Java application needs is for its classes (in JARs) tobe arranged in a particular pattern on the filesystem. In other words, all youneed to do to install Geronimo is to unpack the tarball.You did the hard part already. Since you have created the group and madeyourself a member of that group (see Section 20.3), any member of the groupcan install the product:$ cd /usr/local$ tar xzvf geronimo.tar.gz...$TIPAt this point we suggest using one more Linux filesystem trick. The tarballunpacks into a directory whose name includes the product version—in thiscase, geronimo-1.0-M1. In many cases, you will want to be able to havemore than one version of Geronimo installed on a box simultaneously, eitherbecause you need to port projects from one version to another, or perhapsbecause you need to develop applications that will run on different versions ondifferent target servers. To make your life easier, create a symbolic link to agenerically named directory, such as geronimo and have that symlink pointto geronimo-1.0-M1. Then you can write your startup and shutdown scriptsto use the geronimo pathname. You can then switch to another version bychanging where the symlink points:$ cd /usr/local$ ln -s geronimo-1.0-M1/ geronimoThis process is discussed in detail in Section 6.2 in the context of switchingbetween Java SDK versions.