Amazon Linux Support Added in BitNami Cloud Hosting

We are happy to announce we just released support for Amazon Linux on BitNami Cloud Hosting! Amazon Linux is a distribution of Linux optimized for the Amazon Cloud that is binary compatible with RHEL and CentOS. As with the RHEL support in BitNami Cloud Hosting, we use the native Amazon Linux Stack for deploying the BitNami applications. This means that they are installed on top of the MySQL, Apache, and other components that come bundled with the operating system, allowing you to make use of the OS tools to keep your server up to date.

The Amazon Linux AMI is a supported and maintained Linux image provided by Amazon Web Services for use on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). It is designed to provide a stable, secure, and high performance execution environment for applications running on Amazon EC2. It also includes several packages that enable easy integration with AWS, including launch configuration tools and many popular AWS libraries and tools. Amazon Web Services also provides ongoing security and maintenance updates to all instances running the Amazon Linux AMI. Updates are provided via a pre-configured yum repository hosted in each Amazon EC2 region. Security updates are automatically applied on the initial boot of the AMI. Upon login, the Message of the Day (/etc/motd) indicates whether or not any additional updates are available.

The Amazon Linux AMI is now available at no additional charge in BitNami Cloud Hosting. For more information on Amazon Linux, please visit the Amazon Linux AMI page.

Sign up for free today to run your favorite open source applications on Amazon Linux in the cloud with BitNami Cloud Hosting!

BitNami Brings Your Favorite Apps to HP Cloud Services

Today, HP's new public cloud offering, HP Cloud Services, was released into public beta. We are very happy to announce that we have made two of the BitNami "bundle" Stacks available on HP Cloud Services: DevPack and WebPack.

BitNami DevPack provides an instant deployment environment for some of the most popular web development runtimes and servers, including PHP, Django, Ruby on Rails, Tomcat, MySQL, PostgreSQL and dozens of others. Everything you need to get started developing and hosting your own applications on HP Cloud Services.

BitNami WebPack includes ready to run versions of three of the most popular open source blog and CMS engines: WordPress, Drupal and Joomla!. It will allow you to deploy fully featured websites in minutes which you can later customize with thousands of plugins and addons available for these platforms.

Both of these BitNami images are available now on HP Cloud Services (you will see them in the default set of images you can choose from.) To learn more about the images and running them on HP Cloud Services, check the BitNami wiki.We plan on bringing more of the BitNami Application Library to HP Cloud Services over time. 
HP is currently offering 50% discounts on its service during the public beta, so give it a try!

RubyStack now with RVM and DevKit support

We are happy to announce that we added support for RVM in BitNami RubyStack for OS X and Linux. RubyStack is a popular all-in-one package for everything that you need to get started with Ruby development in general and Rails in particular. It includes Apache, MySQL, SQLite, ImageMagick, Passenger, etc. RubyStack is free and can be downloaded as native installers, VMWare images or launched as Amazon Machine Images.

This new release of RubyStack includes RVM, a command-line tool which allows you to easily install, manage, and work with multiple Ruby environments from interpreters to sets of gems. This is convenient if you need to maintain multiple projects, dependent on different Ruby versions.

To install different Ruby versions it is necessary to have already installed the main compilation tools. These tools are already included inside our RubyStack Virtual Machines and Amazon Cloud Images. If you are using the native installer, you can check the RVM requirements running the following command:

$ rvm requirements

You can list the installed Ruby versions and use one of them. RubyStack 3.2.3-0 installs and configures Ruby 1.9.3-p194.

$ rvm use system

$ ruby --version

ruby 1.9.3p194 (2012-04-20 revision 35410) [x86_64-linux]

You can install another Ruby version, for example:

$ rvm install ruby-1.8.7-p358

You can find more info at BitNami RVM wiki and at the official RVM site.

For Windows users, RubyStack now ships DevKit. It is a toolkit that makes it easy to build and use native C/C++ extensions for Ruby on Windows like JSON, Thin and others.

JRuby 1.6.7.2

We have released an updated BitNami JRuby Stack. According to the official JRuby site all users are encouraged to upgrade to this new JRuby version:

"This is a special release of JRuby which only updates our shipped copy of RubyGems to version 1.8.24. This version of RubyGems is the first version to verify that a RubyGems server certficate is valid. This helps to prevent a “man in the middle” style of attack when someone controls a portion of the network between you and the RubyGems server. All users are encouraged to upgrade to JRuby 1.6.7.2."

Apart from JRuby, this stack also includes updated Tomcat and Java versions.

If you haven't started with JRuby yet and you want to give it a try, take a look at our Quick Start Guide.

Enjoy!

BitNami Magento Stack Updated

We have just released an updated BitNami Magento Stack that includes Magento Community 1.7.0.

This new version help merchants provide a more personalized shopping experience for their customers with the following improvements:

• Improved customer segmentation and ordering capabilities.
• Added auto generation of coupon codes
• Added EU VAT ID validation service integration
• Implemented DHL for Europe
• Added the Cash On Delivery and Bank Transfer payment methods

Check the full list of enhancements here.

2012 Future of Cloud Survey

We have partnered with North Bridge Venture Partners and 37 other leading cloud organizations to sponsor the 2^nd annual Future of Cloud Computing Survey. The survey will capture current perceptions, sentiments and future expectations of cloud computing from industry experts, users and vendors of cloud software, support and services. The goal of the survey is to measure how and to what extent the cloud is being used, the key drivers of growth and change in the cloud, and the impact the cloud is having on IT and business operations. The survey will explore areas such as current use, drivers, barriers, and future plans regarding cloud computing. The survey will also reveal profile information on the types of cloud services currently being used.

Please take a moment to share your thoughts on the future of cloud computing. The survey closes June 1st and the results will be published publicly at www.northbridge.com/software around the end of the month. You can also request that the results be sent to you via email when you complete the survey.

BitNami Supports Ubuntu 12.04

Last week, Ubuntu 12.04 was released, and we are happy to report that  our BitNami virtual machine images and cloud templates (AMIs) have been updated to include this latest and greatest release of Ubuntu! Because 12.04 is an LTS, or "Long Term Support" release, this version of Ubuntu will be supported for 5 years, so you can feel confident deploying systems of all types on it.

The BitNami VMs and AMIs make it incredibly easy to check out Ubuntu 12.04 - just fire up a VM in a virtual environment or spin up a cloud instance and you will be good to go. Enjoy!

New version of Jenkins, Upgrading your BitNami Jenkins Stack

Last week we announced the first version of our BitNami Jenkins Stack. This week a new Jenkins version was announced and we have already updated our stack. However, in some cases it is more convenient to upgrade the installation in place than re-installing. This post explains briefly how to upgrade a Jenkins installation manually.

The first step is to understand where the JENKINS_HOME variable is pointing to. That directory is where all your data is stored.

In BitNami we define JENKINS_HOME in the apache-tomcat/conf/Catalina/localhost/jenkins.xml file pointing to apps/jenkins/jenkins_home. If you want to upgrade Jenkins keeping your data, you just need to download the latest jenkins.war file, copy it in your apache-tomcat/webapps directory and restart Tomcat. It is recommended to create a backup of the previous jenkins.war file, just in case you find issues when upgrading.


On Linux and OSX you can execute the following steps to perform the above (notice that the installation directory is /opt/bitnami in the BitNami virtual appliances and BitNami Amazon Images):

$ cd <installation_directory>

$ ./ctlscript.sh stop

$ cp apache-tomcat/webapps/jenkins.war apps/jenkins/jenkins.war.bak

$ wget http://mirrors.jenkins-ci.org/war/latest/jenkins.war

$ mv jenkins.war apache-tomcat/webapps/

$ ./ctlscript.sh start


On Windows you can stop the servers from the Start Menu entry or using the graphical tool that you can find in your installation directory. Using the file explorer go to where you installed the BitNami Jenkins Stack. Copy the jenkins.war file from the apache-tomcat/webapps directory to apps/jenkins. Download the latest jenkins.war file and copy it in apache-tomcat/webapps. Now just start the server from the Start Menu or using the graphical tool.

Alternatively to the process above, you can download a new BitNami Jenkins Stack. You can install it to a different location (remember to stop the previous install so there are no port conflicts) and point it to your previous JENKINS_HOME path by editing the file  apache-tomcat/conf/Catalina/localhost/jenkins.xml.

Managing your BitNami Drupal installation with Drush

We are happy to announce a new version of BitNami Drupal Stack. This new version includes support for Drush. Drush is a command line shell tool and scripting interface for Drupal designed to make life easier for people who need to deploy multiple Drupal installations.

Thanks to Drush you can easily manage your Drupal modules, edit configuration settings or backup your sites from the command line.

To get started, you first need to load the right environment. This is done automatically when logging in to a virtual appliance or cloud image. If you installed Drupal on your desktop, you can do so by executing:

/path/to/bitnami-drupal-install-directory/use_drupal

and on Windows by clicking on Start Menu > BitNami Drupal Stack > Use Drupal Stack.

The following are example commands you can run after that:

• Download and install a module, for example Content Construction Kit (CCK ) a popular plugin that allows adding custom fields to nodes using a web browser

          drush pm-download cck
    drush pm-enable cck

• Export the Drupal database as SQL, for backup purposes

    drush sql-dump > drupal_backup.sql

• Or you can backup everything, including your code, files, and database into a single file

    drush archive-dump default --destination=/backups/drupal_site.tar

•  Set a variable, for example the site email address

    drush variable-set site_mail mail@example.com

More information can be found in the official Drush guide. Thanks to OpenMelva for their suggestions and feedback Drush and other aspects of our Drupal stack.

Continuous Integration with Jenkins and BitNami

If you are a developer, you are probably already familiar with Jenkins. Previously known as Hudson, Jenkins is an open source continuous integration server built with Java that supports building and testing virtually any project. It supports different SCM tools, can execute Apache Ant and Apache Maven-based projects as well as arbitrary shell scripts and Windows batch commands, can monitor executions of remote tasks and more. Hundreds of plugins are also available that you can use for configuring your own system based on your specific requirements.

Today, we are happy to announce a first version of our BitNami Jenkins Stack. It includes Apache Tomcat 7.0.27 and the latest (and greatest) available Jenkins version, Jenkins 1.460. As always, you can get the native installers, virtual appliances and AMIs for the Amazon Cloud.

Here are a few notes on the default BitNami configuration:

- Jenkins is configured with Tomcat. For starting Tomcat you can use our Graphical Manager Tool or the ctlscript.sh utility both included in the installation directory (the installation directory is /opt/bitnami in Virtual Machines and AMIs). On Windows, Tomcat is installed as a service and it will automatically start at boot time.

- The JENKINS_HOME variable will point to apps/jenkins/jenkins_home in your installation directory.

- We configure the stack with the standard security setup. The access control is Jenkins's own user database as security realm and we use the Project-based Matrix Authorization Strategy. During the installation process, you will be prompted to enter the administrator user credentials, which by default will be user/bitnami in Virtual Appliances and AMIs. Notice that Anonymous login and user sign up are disabled. After login, you can easily change these settings through the Jenkins Web interface.

If you haven't had the chance to take a look at Jenkins yet, you no longer have an excuse! We know that you will find Jenkins to be a great and flexible is tool, both in the web interface and the APIs it provides. We would like to hear about your experience when trying BitNami Jenkins (good or bad) in any of its flavors (native installers, virtual machines or AMIs).

If you are already familiar with Jenkins, we would love to hear from you as well. We know there are lot of possible configurations with Jenkins and third party components and we would like to get your feedback on how to improve the BitNami Jenkins Stack.

BitNami Jenkins we will be very soon available in BitNami Cloud Hosting too!

Running BitNami in the Cloud with RHEL Presentation Available On-Demand

If you missed our joint webcast with Red Hat last week, you can now view it on demand. Tune in to see how to deploy BitNami apps using our RHEL-based AMIs in the Amazon Cloud and learn about the benefits of running Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the cloud.

If you would like more configurable deployments, automatic backups, built-in monitoring, one-click resizing and more, check out BitNami Cloud Hosting, which makes it easier to deploy and manage your favorite open source apps on RHEL and other platforms in the Amazon Cloud.

Join the BitNami Team!

If you are reading this post, you are probably already familiar with BitNami. We provide a library of free, ready to run open source applications that you can run locally or in the cloud. Our stacks have helped literally millions of developers and end users worldwide, from Fortune 500 companies to universities, governments and two-people teams building video games.

We are growing and we are looking for talented, passionate individuals to join our support team.

What your job will look like: You will be responsible for helping BitNami users get started with our apps and work with them to solve any setup and configuration issues they run into.

What we are looking for: Smart, inquisitive minds that have fun solving technical problems and genuinely enjoy helping others.

You should have outstanding communication skills and be comfortable setting up and configuring web-based applications in Linux/Unix. Some of the apps and frameworks we package include Joomla!, Drupal, WordPress, Redmine, Ruby on Rails and Django. You do not need to be an expert on all of them (or at least not at the beginning!) but you need to be proficient enough to help others and learn the technologies you are not familiar with quickly.

Having fun in Sierra Nevada!

We are headquartered in the US, but most of our development team is in Seville, Spain and Krakow, Poland. Ideally you would be located in one of these cities but we will also consider a remote position for the right candidate. You will need to be available to travel a couple of times a year for our company get-togethers (the latest ones involved snowboarding in the Spanish Sierra Nevada and four wheeling on the island of Tenerife, so the travel is not too bad :)

Ready to join the BitNami team? Send us your CV to careers@bitnami.org together with a brief cover letter telling us why you would like to join our team and sharing one example of a complex technical problem you solved and how you went about it.

PostgreSQL 9.1 with PostGIS 2.0 support in BitNami Stacks

We have been recently working to add support for PostGIS 2.0 in our PostgreSQL-based stacks. For the first release we have focused our efforts in LAPPStack Dev and MAPPStack Dev. These stacks also include Apache 2.4, PHP 5.4.0 and PostgreSQL 9.1.3. Together with PostGIS we have also added support for other PostgreSQL extensions. These are the available extensions on your databases:

You can check our PostGIS Quickstart guide for details how to use PostGIS 2.0 with PostgreSQL 9.1.

Over the next few weeks we will be adding PostGIS support to BitNami DjangoStack, the PostgreSQL module for LAMPStack and RubyStack as well as in BitNami Cloud Hosting. We would love to hear your feedback about this new addition to BitNami!

Help Drive Open Source Adoption by Taking a Quick Survey

We have teamed up with Black Duck Software, North Bridge Venture Partners, 451 Research and over  20 other collaborating organizations to introduce the 2012 Future of Open Source Survey – the results to be revealed on May 21^st at Computerworld’s Open Source Business Conference (OSBC). 

This survey follows on the heels of a very successful five year survey that has sparked important discussions around open source adoption.  The survey is supported by working together to address broad industry initiatives that go beyond the scope of any one group.  Take the survey here to voice your opinion and hear leading ideas around:

·         Hot technologies - such as mobile and cloud - and geographic growth areas for OSS adoption

·         Why companies engage directly and strategically with OSS communities

·         Industry-specific trends such as the formation of super-communities - communities of communities - dominating the next phase of OSS adoption

·         Top up and coming open source companies and projects

The survey results will be available on May 21^st to all respondents and by following discussion on Twitter @FutureofOSS and #FutureOSS.  Past survey results are available for viewing on the Future of Open Source Forum.

As an added incentive, all survey respondents will receive 20% off their pass to OSBC!