Question

I have just ordered a VPS from my provider.

I have some Q however…
My website uses Solr, which requires the following according to their website:

"Solr requires Java 1.5 and an Application server (such as Tomcat) which supports the Servlet 2.4 standard"

I also need php 5, MySql, and the usual javascript etc…
The OS is Ubuntu 9.10

1- So what do I need to install then?

2- What is a servlet container?

3- The solr I have downloaded came with Jetty. Is Jetty a Servlet container?

Thanks

Answer 1

A Servlet container is basically a web server for Java Servlets and JSP pages.

Tomcast and Jetty are both Servlet containers.

In the phrase you quoted, it is using the phrase “Application server” interchangeably with “Servlet container”. While Solr may only require a Servlet container, it shouldn’t use the terms interchangeably.

The Servlet container is only part of a J2EE application server. Some other application servers (that also include Servlet containers) are JBoss and Apache Geronimo; Geronimo uses either Tomcat or Jetty depending on which set you install.

If you also need PHP, a Servlet Container won’t be enough… you’ll also need a normal webserver.

Installing the libapache2-mod-php5 module from the Ubuntu repository should install both PHP5 and Apache 2.2 for you. To install MySQL, install the mysql-server and php5-mysql packages.

Assuming you only have command-line access, installing packages on Ubuntu is done using the aptitude or apt-get programs; aptitude is preferred.

Before you install new programs, you should always run aptitude update, which updates the local index of which programs are available. Afterwards, you can upgrade existing packages with aptitude safe-upgrade and install new packages with aptitude install <packagename> (without the <>)

Ubuntu is usually pretty good about keeping the available package list up to date, and will periodically tell you on login that some packages have available upgrades. Since upgrades are almost always security updates, it is a good idea to check for them.