Hello JB and Andreas,
Just read the documentation about "custom distribution". Good documentation.
It is very close to the way I handle things today. What I would like to
avoid, however, is, e g having to edit system.properties/startup.properties
everytime I upgrade to a new version of Karaf. I would prefer to keep them
intact and instead put my custom system properties in a
"custom_system.properties" and my extra bundles in a
"custom_startup.properties", and so on. Why not one extra level of
indirection? Karaf could allow the user to specify (e g in
karaf-custom.cfg...) in what additional locations Karaf should look for
additional system properties, additional bundles to load at startup etc.
Then it's the actual launching of Karaf. Presently I have to customise
karaf.bat, karaf-service.bat and karaf-wrapper.conf. I would like those
existing files to be more customisable/brandable so that I don't have to
modify the Karaf distribution at all. In production, I use the wrapper
service which doesn't come "unpacked" with Karaf. When I download a new
version of Karaf I have to install it, start it and finally install the
wrapper service. Then I have a base for customisation since until then I
didn't even have access to the wrapper files bundled with Karaf.
In summary I think that the goal with a customised server should be that all
customisation (within reasonable limits) should be possible to do without
modifying any files that come with the Karaf distribution. My customisation
should solely exist of files that I add to Karaf and therefore do normally
not need to be updated with every new Karaf version.
Personally I need to customise the following ("my reasonable limits"?):
- Console title
- Windows service title/name/display name/description
- Memory requirements (-Xmx and -XX:MaxPermSize)
- Define system properties on the command line (-D)
- Probably need to customise the entire java command line since I might want
to override parameters that are set by the Karaf distribution (e g the Derby
data directory)
- KARAF_HOME/KARAF_BASE (when running as a service)
- Wrapper log configuration (the normal logging is specified
in org.ops4j.pax.logging.cfg in which case I use my own version)
- What features to install. I use my own org.apache.karaf.features.cfg which
is fine.
- What ports to use. The reason is that we must allow more than one Karaf
installation on the same server (e g production and test). Presently I
therefore modify org.apache.karaf.management.cfg, org.ops4j.pax.web.cfg
and org.apache.karaf.shell.cfg where I replace the ports with property
placeholders that I filter with maven-assembly-plugin.
- Additional bundles to load at startup (the reason why I started this
thread on the mailing list) which I now have to add in startup.properties.
/Bengt
2011/2/12 <[email protected]>
> Hi Bengt,
>
> I've added documentation about custom distriubtion yesterday.
> Anyway, there is an open discussion about Karaf profiles, still in
> brainstorming mode ;)
>
> Regards
> JB
> ------------------------------
> *From: * Bengt Rodehav <[email protected]>
> *Sender: * [email protected]
> *Date: *Sat, 12 Feb 2011 09:18:46 +0100
> *To: *<[email protected]>
> *ReplyTo: * [email protected]
> *Subject: *Re: Problems with features startlevel
>
> Good morning Guillaume,
>
> Hope you got a few hours of sleep anyway. I'm also in GMT+1 (Stockholm) and
> sleep too little but I'm not quite in your class..
>
> I've seen a conversation in the Karaf forums where you've discussed how to
> create custom servers more easily. That's a very interesting topic for me.
> Ideally I would like to take a standard Karaf installation without really
> having to modify any of the files but just add my custom configuration. That
> way it would be so much easier to upgrade Karaf versions. So, not wanting to
> edit startup.properties stem from that desire.
>
> Things I would like to customize (with extension points, not by modifying
> Karaf standard installation) are, among others:
>
> - All names that are visible: title, NT service title and description...
> - Memory requirements
> - Other java options, especially system properties
> - The use of environment variables to determine where I put my data (log,
> Derby, configuration, etc). I don't want to have this as part of the Karaf
> installation since it makes upgrades much harder.
> - Bundles to load at startup (startup.properties)
> - Features to install. Here I actually just
> overwrite org.apache.karaf.features.cfg with my own which I think is OK.
>
> There are probably a few more things that I customize that I can't recall
> just now. However, upgrading the Karaf version is a lot of work which is why
> I would really like it to be easier to customize the installation. Have you
> had any more discussions on this topic?
>
> /Bengt
>
> 2011/2/12 Guillaume Nodet <[email protected]>
>
>> On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 00:38, Bengt Rodehav <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > Ok, thanks. Is there know way to avoid having to modify
>> startup.properties
>> > then?
>>
>> Not really at startup. I think after a restart, things are different
>> as the cglib bundle is already installed and should be used by the
>> framework.
>>
>> > (Do you never sleep or are we in different time zones?)
>>
>> GMT +1, and not much / enough sleep unfortunately ;-)
>>
>> > Den 12 feb 2011 00.15 skrev "Guillaume Nodet" <[email protected]>:
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Cheers,
>> Guillaume Nodet
>> ------------------------
>> Blog: http://gnodet.blogspot.com/
>> ------------------------
>> Open Source SOA
>> http://fusesource.com
>>
>
>
