Miles to go …

I downloaded and installed Glassfish b42 promoted build. This is the first time I’m downloading and installing Glassfish on my machine so here is my experience so far.

1. Ignoring the installation instructions (with a "I know it" attitude) and realizing the downloaded bundle extension is ".jar" I ran the install command as:

   java -jar glassfish-installer-9.0-b42.jar

   but got:

   Exception in thread “main” java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space

   So I had to go back to the install instructions and then finally it unzipped the bundle in my current directory. I wonder why so much memory is required for the installer and can it be reduced ? I was surprised that it just created a directory in my current directory without asking directory name or my permission. For fun, I ran the same command again and then the installer simply overwrites all the files. At the least, I expected a warning (may be an error) in such case.

2. After running the command:

   ant -f setup.xml

   I saw:

   …
   [exec] Make sure that this file remains protected. Information stored in this file will be used by asadmin commands
to manage this domain.
[delete] Deleting: D:\testbed\glassfish\passfile

   BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 1 minute 6 seconds

   I think an explicit command like "Glassfish successfully installed at D:\testbed\glassfish" will be good.

3. I started the Glassfish server using

   $AS_HOME/bin/asadmin start-domain domain1

   and saw:

   Starting Domain domain1, please wait.
Log redirected to D:\testbed\glassfish\domains\domain1\logs\server.log.
Domain domain1 is ready to receive client requests. Additional services are being started in background.
Domain [domain1] is running [Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 9.0 RC (build b42)] with its configurat
ion and logs at: [D:\testbed\glassfish\domains].
Admin Console is available at [http://localhost:4848].
Use the same port [4848] for "asadmin" commands.
User web applications are available at these URLs:
[http://localhost:8080 https://localhost:8181 ].
Following web-contexts are available:
[/web1 /asadmin ].
Standard JMX Clients (like JConsole) can connect to JMXServiceURL:
[service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://iamfine:8686/jmxrmi] for domain management purposes.
Domain listens on at least following ports for connections:
[8080 8181 4848 3700 3820 3920 8686 ].

   The actual message Domain [domain1] is running ... got lost because of all the configuration information displayed. I think instead this information should be copied to a log file and a pointer provided during the startup time. That will also make it easy for the user to refer back.

After these initial minor and non-blocking issues, I could get the Glassfish container up and running fairly quickly and easily. Good job!

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