Installing Zend Server Community Edition on a Debian Lenny 5.0 OpenVZ container

If you want to install the Zend Server Community Edition on an existing Debian server you should do it like described here:
http://files.zend.com/help/Zend-Server-5-Community-Edition/zend-server.htm#deb_installation.htm

1) Add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://repos.zend.com/zend-server/deb server non-free

2) Add the key: wget http://repos.zend.com/deb/zend.key -O- |apt-key add -

3) # apt-get update

4) # apt-get install zend-server-ce-php-5.2

5) Go to https://[servername]:10082/ZendServer to create an admin account
But here i encountered the first problem:

I just got a 503 - Service Not Available - to fix that you have to restart the Zend Server with:
# /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh restart

6) Go to https://[servername]:10082/ZendServer and enter the configuration screen
Now i was able to load https://[servername]:10082/ZendServer and create a administration account with a password.

But then, when i want to enter the admin interface i get the following error: Failed to access Web server. Please make sure that the Web server is running and listening to the correct port

So to check the status enter this:
# /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh status
[28.05.2010 17:05:33 SYSTEM] Apache is not running.
[ 28.05.2010 17:56:33 SYSTEM] watchdog for lighttpd is running.
[ 28.05.2010 17:56:33 SYSTEM] lighttpd is running.
/usr/local/zend/etc/rc.d/apache: line 116: www-browser: command not found

I found out that Zend is using lynx for the status, but it was not installed on my system.
# apt-get install lynx

When i retyped the status-info i got the following:

# /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh status
[28.05.2010 18:05:04 SYSTEM] Apache is not running.
[ 28.05.2010 18:05:04 SYSTEM] watchdog for lighttpd is running.
[ 28.05.2010 18:05:04 SYSTEM] lighttpd is running.

Looking up localhost
Making HTTP connection to localhost
Alert!: Unable to connect to remote host.

lynx: Can't access startfile http://localhost/server-status

So when i looked into /var/log/apache2/error.log i found the following entry:
Fri May 28 19:04:50 2010: [ Zend Optimizer+ (2002) Fatal Error] Unable to allocate shared memory segment of 67108864 bytes: mmap: No space left on device (28)

After some research on the web i found this post. So it turned out to be a problem on virtual environments like Virtuozzo or OpenVZ. After changing the value on the OpenVZ Host to the following it worked:

# vzctl set [OpenVZ-ID] --shmpages $(( 21504*4 )):$(( 21504*4 )) --save

Now i can configure Zend finally.

Ubuntu Distribution Upgrade in a OpenVZ Container

If you use Debain Lenny on your OpenVZ host and your Container is a Ubuntu 9.04 and you want to do a apt-get dist-upgrade to 9.10 you will end on the host with this error:

# vzctl enter 1234
enter into VE 1234 failed
Unable to open pty: No such file or directory

What happend? In Ubuntu upstart is responsible for the initialization process but therefore it needs some kernel specific stuff which is not in the 2.6.26 kernel from Debian Lenny. There is a bug report on Launchpad describing the problem.

So on the blog of bodhizazen, the person who started the bug report, you can find the needed upstart script of Stéphane Graber. Like written in bodhizazen blog entry do the following on the host:

cd /var/lib/vz/private/[VZID]/etc/init/
wget http://bodhizazen.net/openvz.conf

Now you can connect again to your virtual ubuntu machine. But if you upgrade from Ubuntu 9.10 to 10.04 you will receive the error message like above.

The solution was found fast, again from Stéphane Graber.

Simply edit /etc/init/openvz.conf and remove the two mount lines for /proc and /sys.

Now you can enjoy your Ubuntu 10.04 LTS container on a Debian Lenny host.

fosvm 0.03a

Working on the shell is not everyone's favorite way to interact with a computer, especially when it comes to the point to enter a long cryptographic command, which you only need once or twice a year, for example changing some parameters on a openvz container.

So I was searching for a free and open source management tool like the nice Proxmox Virtual Environment - but Proxmox VE is just available for 64bit Intel/AMD systems, which support Intel VT or AMD-V capable CPU.

On the OpenVZ homepage I found a page with control panels. I started at the first entry on the page: fosvm - Free Open Source Virtual Machine Manager

It looked like the thing I was searching for - a lightweight monitor. I'm running a fresh installed Debian Lenny, so for the installation I had to add the following packages: apache2, php5, php5-mysql, mysql.

For fosvm 0.03a to work, you need to create a mysql-user with some privileges. In the documentation I couldn't find the privileges which were exactly needed. Before you start the installation of fosvm 0.03a, you should fix the install script, install.sh, by changing the line "crontab -l > cron/tmp.cron" to "crontab cron/tmp.cron", or else you will write the actual crontab into the file, not the other way around. I also created a forum-post about this problem, hoping the maintainer of fosvm will response.

fosvm looks real promising, and like most of open source projects starting with a 0.0x version number and ending with a 'a' for alpha are not yet ready for productive systems - but i will keep an eye on it!