INSTALLING ON LINUX/UNIX/SOLARIS

Nebulae has been installed and tested in different distributions of Linux (RedHat, Slackware and Debian), Solaris and other *nix systems. We recommend using the the official Java VM from Sun if possible.

The Nebulae server is distributed in a .tar file available at the DOWNLOAD section on xtras.tabuleiro.com. We suggest that the files are decompressed in the /usr/local/nebulae directory, but you can keep them anywhere on your system. You can create a new user to run the server or run it as a root or any unprivileged account: Java applications rely on the Java VM to provide security to the whole system. The only restriction is that the user running the server must have access rights to the directory where the server files are installed, since it will be necessary to create database files and a server log. To create the directory (this assumes you are logged as root) and decompress your files open a shell account and issue the following commands:

cd /usr/local

mkdir nebulae

You can copy the Nebulae_2.tar file downloaded from Tabuleiro's site to this directory, and use the following command to decompress it:

cd nebulae

tar -xvf Nebulae_2.tar

This will create files Nebulae.jar, hsqldb.jar, Nebulae.cfg, ScriptMap.cfg and Movie.cfg. The original .tar file can be deleted at this time. You can also decompress the tar file with another utility like Winzip on your PC and upload the decompressed archives directly to your Linux server.

Before the server runs for the first time it is recommended that you create at least one administrative user in the server database, to allow access to server administration commands in the future. This can be accomplished by editing the "CreateUser" directive in the Nebulae.cfg file:

#CreateUser = admin,pass,100

Uncomment the line by removing the pound sign at the beginning, and customize the values for username and password. This command will create a user names "admin", with password "pass" and userlevel 100 the first time the server is started. Please note that while the server can operate without a server administrator account you will not be able to shutdown it remotely until an administrative user is added. You can use pico or other text editor to edit the configuration file.

We recommend running the official Java VM from Sun. You can issue the following command to verify that the installation is functional:

java -version

Version 1.6 of Sun's VM will return the following output:

java -version

java version "1.6.0"

Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0-b105)

Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.6.0-b105, mixed mode, sharing)

To locate the path to java on your system, use:

which java

You can then start the Nebulae server and put it to run in the background with the following command:

/usr/java/jdk/bin/java -cp Nebulae.jar:hsqldb.jar net.tabuleiro.nebulae.Nebulae &

Please remember to run the command from the directory where Nebulae is installed. You can also use a shell script to start the server. This version adds the Nebulae directory to the classpath, so you can put server side script classes in the same directory of Nebulae (/usr/local/nebulae) in order to have them loaded by your movies. If you need to use a JDBC driver (for PostgreSQL connection for example) you should also remember to list its location on the classpath:

#!/bin/csh -f

cd /usr/local/nebulae

unlimit

/usr/java/jdk/bin/java -Dfile.encoding=ISO-8859-1 -cp Nebulae.jar:hsqldb.jar:/usr/local/nebulae:postgresql.jar net.tabuleiro.nebulae.Nebulae &

The "unlimit" command is useful on some distributions, where there is a limit on the number of file descriptors available per user. If you need to support more than 1024 simultaneous connections it may be necessary to raise the number of file descriptors available to your user session: please consult your Linux distributor for more assistance on the commands appropriated for your specific distribution.

For your convenience Nebulae can be restarted or shutdown remotely by an user connected as an administrator (userlevel 100), using the commands "system.server.restart" and "system.server.shutdown". The Nebulae Administrator tool includes these commands and is available at the download section of Tabuleiro web site. It can be used for server administration using any browser with the current Shockwave plugin.

If you need to stop a server you can also find its process id from the shell:

ps -auxww

This will show the process IDs for all running applications. Locate the Nebulae server process (it contains the java application name) and kill it with:

kill pidnumber