If you are in a hurry to have Apache Geronimo up and running right away, this article will provide you with some basic steps for downloading, building (when needed) and running the server in no time.

All you need is 5 to 10 minutes and to follow these basic steps.

Getting the software

There are currently two ways to get the released software. You can either retrieve it from the Apache SVN repository or fhe fastest and the easiest way is to get the binary directly from the Apache Geronimo site. Since this article is intended to help you to have Apache Geronimo up and running in the fastest possible way, only the binary download will be covered at this time.

Prerequisites

Although this installation path is the fastest one, still you are required to install some software before installing Geronimo.

Java SE 5 or 6

Apache Geronimo v2.2 is Java EE 5 Certified. Refer to the following URL for details on how to download and install the latest Java SE 5 or Java SE 6 JRE or JDK (only required for wsgen tools):
http://java.sun.com

It is possible to run Apache Geronimo v2.2 on the IBM 1.5.0/1.6.0 SDK and other implementations of Java that are certified as Java SE 5 or 6 compliant, but we do not test or certify Geronimo on those implementations.

Download binaries

Depending on the platform you plan to install and run the Apache Geronimo, you will select the appropriate installation image. Open a Web browser and access the following URL, there you will find the available packages for download (binaries and source code).

http://geronimo.apache.org/downloads.html

Geronimo v2.2 is available in three assembly configurations:

Java EE 5 : full Java EE 5 functionality
Minimal (Little-G) : Web Container, Transaction, and Connector capabilities
Framework : Geronimo kernel core functionality

For this section,we use Java EE 5 assemblies with Tomcat Web container. Detailed information about differences among three assembly configurations will be depicted in Getting and installing Geronimo.

Select the file compression format compatible with your system (zip, tar, gz) by clicking directly on the link, download it and expand the binary to your hard drive in a new directory. For example in z:/geronimo, from now on this directory will be referenced as <geronimo_home>.

The installation of Apache Geronimo is as simple as uncompressing the .zip or .tar.gz files. The next step is to start the server.

Start the server

With Apache Geronimo already installed, open a command line console and change directory to <geronimo_home>/bin and run one of the following commands:

geronimo run
start-server
gsh geronimo/start-server

This will start the server within the existing terminal, instead of as a background process. Once the server is started you should see a screen similar to this one.

started in .000s started in .000s started in .180s started in .126s started in .031s ployment_1.1MR3_spec/2.2-SNAPSHOT/car started in .000s started in .000s started in .495s started in .233s started in .000s started in .254s started in .000s started in .000s started in 1.416s e_5/2.2-SNAPSHOT/car started in .000s started in .000s started in 1.182s started in .004s started in .027s started in .805s started in .113s started in .000s started in .000s started in .575s started in .004s started in 2.167s started in .014s started in .055s started in .000s started in .179s started in .073s started in .072s /2.2-SNAPSHOT/car started in .956s started in .253s started in .023s started in .016s started in .013s started in .015s started in .077s started in .097s started in .053s started in .052s started in .000s started in .043s started in .000s started in .041s started in .051s started in .303s started in .150s started in .000s started in .209s started in 2.503s started in .315s started in .377s started in .559s started in .066s started in .477s started in .103s started in .007s started in .242s started in .120s started in .021s started in .000s started in .000s started in .000s ar T/car car ar

To test the Apache Geronimo server you can just point your Web browser to the following URL to test the Geronimo Console. The Geronimo Administration Console is the first application you can test, and the good thing is, it is already deployed in the standard, full J2EE certified distribution.

http://localhost:8080/console

When prompted enter system as the user name and manager as the password.

The following figure illustrates the Web based console.

At this point you have Apache Geronimo up and running and the time spent has been minimal. The following section offers a very basic sample JSP and shows you how to deploy and run that sample application.

Create and deploy a sample application

A HelloWorld like JSP is almost a default for these basic testing and everybody is already familiar with it. Create a new directory to hold all the application related files. From now on this directory will be referred as <app_home>.

Create a plain text file in the <app_home> directory named HelloWorld.jsp and copy the content of the following example.

HelloWorld.jsp

<html>
  <head>
   <jsp:useBean id="datetime" class="java.util.Date"/>
    <title>
        Basic HelloWorld JSP
     </title>
 </head>
  <body bgcolor="#1276C2">
     <h1>
        <font face="tahoma" color="white">
                 Hello world from GERONIMO!
         </font>
       </h1>
          <font face="tahoma" color="white">on ${datetime}</font>
      </body>
</html>

We will now create a Geronimo specific deployment plan so you would get a first glimpse of the deployment plans. Create a directory named WEB-INF inside the <app_home> directory.

Create a plain text file in the <app_home>/WEB-INF directory named geronimo-web.xml and copy the content of the following example.

Geronimo deployment plan geronimo-web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns="http://geronimo.apache.org/xml/ns/j2ee/web-2.0.1">
    <environment>
        <moduleId>
            <groupId>org.apache.geronimo.samples</groupId>
            <artifactId>HelloWorldApp</artifactId>
            <version>2.1</version>
            <type>war</type>
        </moduleId>             
    </environment>
    <context-root>/hello</context-root>
</web-app>

Create a plain text file in the <app_home>/WEB-INF directory named web.xml and copy the content of the following example.

web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="2.4" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"
                       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
		       xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee
		       http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">
    
    <welcome-file-list>
        <welcome-file>HelloWorld.jsp</welcome-file>
    </welcome-file-list>

</web-app>

Deploy and test the application

For this example we will not invest time in packaging the application, we will just use the --inPlace feature of the deployer tool which allows us to deploy an application from any directory.

Change directory to <geronimo_home>/bin and run the following command:

deploy --user system --password manager deploy --inPlace <app_home>

Once the application is successfully deployed you should see the following message:

D:\geronimo-tomcat6-javaee5-2.1\bin>deploy --user system --password manager deploy --inPlace \HelloWorld
Using GERONIMO_BASE:   D:\geronimo-tomcat6-javaee5-2.1
Using GERONIMO_HOME:   D:\geronimo-tomcat6-javaee5-2.1
Using GERONIMO_TMPDIR: var\temp
Using JRE_HOME:        C:\Java\jdk1.5.0_06\jre
    Deployed sample.applications/HelloWorldApp/2.1/war @ /hello

Test the application by pointing a Web browser to the following URL:

http://localhost:8080/hello

Stop the server

In the terminal used to start the server, press CTRL+C initiate a server shutdown.

Summary

This article shows you how simple is to have Apache Geronimo up and running. The overall time for getting the server running should be less than five minutes if you have the prerequisites already installed. Additionally, this article also shows you how to create, deploy and test a very simple JSP in less than five minutes.

No labels

Child pages

Quick start - Apache Geronimo for the impatient