[chef] Re: rewriting my tomcat LWRP, how best to group options?

[Edward Sargisson < >]

Hi Bryan,
I'm looking forward to seeing what the new cookbook looks like because I greatly rely on your good work!

Firstly, would you be able to make the datasource take an array so that we can have multiples? In my setup, I use Liquibase to automatically upgrade the database. I use a special, slightly more privileged but not super, user to actually do that upgrade and thus have two datasources.

As for jvm options, I would suggest surfacing most options with little translation (option 2 below). There are the very basic knobs to turn (which you've nicely surfaced) like heap size, GC, etc. However, if I want to twist another knob then I'm going to want to know exactly what I'm doing. i.e. maybe a page in the docs for Tomcat says use -XXgofaster so I'm going to want to know I've added -XXgofaster without having to read the cookbook. Having done similar things in JBoss and Websphere AS I definitely prefer to know what's going on.

Lastly, what about context settings for JMS, email, etc. While I doubt you need to write them in right now it would be nice to have a spot in your model where they'd fit so that somebody can add it later.

Cheers,

Edward

On Sun, Apr 15, 2012 at 6:46 AM, Bryan Berry < "> > wrote:

I am rewriting my tomcat lwrp and here is what I have in mind, partly
inspired by Andrea Campi's work
https://github.com/andreacampi/application_java

tomcat "liferay" do
  gc do
    min           "256m"
    max           "512m"
    max_perm_size "256m"
    algorithm     "UseConcMarkSweepGC"
  end
  profiling do               # JMX
    port            "98204"
    ssl             false
    authentication  false
  end
 datasource do
   driver 'org.gjt.mm.mysql.Driver'
   database 'name'
    port 5678
    username 'user'
    password 'password'
    max_active 1
    max_idle 2
    max_wait 3
  end
  ports dof
    http      8080
    https     8443  # defaults to nil and not used
    ajp       8009
    shutdown  8005
  end

end

Commandline JVM options that don't fit into the above api would have
to be crammed into an attribute like "additional_opts" or
node['tomcat']['additional_opts']

the issue I have is whether to group the options to be used by java
virtual machine by function or by category.

Here is a different take on the  tomcat lwrp, the uses a 'jvm' block
with the xx_opts and d_opts which correspond to -XX, and -D options.
thoughts?

tomcat "pentaho" do
     path     "/opt/pentaho"
     version         "7"
     user            "pentaho"
     unpack_wars     true
     auto_deploy     true
     environment     { }
     jvm do
       xms           "256m"
       xmx           "512m"
       max_perm_size "256m"
       xx_opts       { }
       d_opts        { }
       additional_opts [    ]
     end
     datasource do
       driver 'org.gjt.mm.mysql.Driver'
       database 'name'
       port 5678
       username 'user'
       password 'password'
       max_active 1
       max_idle 2
       max_wait 3
     end
     ports do
       http      8080
       https     8443  # defaults to nil and not used
       ajp       8009
       shutdown  8005
     end
   end

the JVM has so many bloody options that this may be the  more feasible
solution. also w/ the xx_opts, and d_opts I can use simpler options
hash like

node['tomcat']['xx_opts'] = { 'ParallelGCThreads':'',
'+UseConcMarkSweepGC':'', 'CompileThreshold' : '10000' }
node['tomcat']['d_opts'] = { 'user.timezone': 'UTC',  'file.encoding': 'UTF8'}

would convert to -XX:ParallelGCThreads -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC
-XX:CompileThreshold=10000 -Duser.timezone=UTC -Dfile.encoding=UTF8