Forum Problems Installing LAMS: Newbie: LiveCD, LAMS on a stick or similar?

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Hi Uwe,

We've been discussing the idea of having a LAMS LiveCD but we haven't got it yet. However, in December we created an LAMS image that you can use with VMPlayer. It's based on Ubuntu Linux and it seems to run quite well.

Jun-Dir has been the father of the creature, so maybe he could give you all the details about it.

Nevertheless, if anyone in the community can help us with a LiveCD, we'll be more than happy to support/help them in that.

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Jun-Dir Liew

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Some sort of LiveCD would be cool, even better if it could fit on your average USB stick! Unfortunately a LAMS install takes about 100MB (not to mention database server, etc) so there's probably a bit of work there to start off with...

I made a virtual machine for VMPlayer (http://www.vmware.com/products/player/) that is basically Ubuntu 5.10 installed with the server configuration, and LAMS/MySQL/etc installed to auto-startup. It hasn't been modified otherwise, so since logs/uploaded files/records still need to be written to disk, the virtual machine image still needs to be on your hard disk rather than on a 'live dvd' (it doesn't fit on a CD, not with MySQL/Java/Xvfb and dependencies installed). So, not really 'live' at the moment.

Next step would be to set it up so that MySQL and LAMS work off a RAM drive or something - however the host machine would need quite a bit of RAM to handle host OS/guest OS/JBoss server/MySQL server/RAM drive. And at that point, may as well look at doing a proper Live CD/DVD, and eliminate the memory required by a host OS running VMPlayer.

Posted by Jun-Dir Liew

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Uwe,

Just for the record, while we are at it, you can use the LAMS demo server as well:

http://lamsdemo.melcoe.mq.edu.au/lams

In there you can create yourself an account and also create 5 accounts for your student/colleagues. They will be all in the same class, so you can create sequences and assign them to this class.

Your account is active for 30 days but you can renew it for another 30 when time is due (the LAMSdemo server will send you an email 5 days before it expires).

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Jun-Dir Liew

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Well I made a first step, got LAMS running entirely off a USB stick. Java, MySQL, and LAMS - about 320MB. It's a bit slow to run off of, but it works. And should work on any machine with Windows 2000 and up, with 512 MB of RAM. The same could be done for Linux, but you would need to replace the JDK and MySQL binaries with Linux ones.

It could do with a bit of streamlining in the startup/shutdown area (basically you have to change the drive letter whenever you change machine if you want to use the included Java, then double click mysqld-nt.exe and run.bat). For anyone who's done the manual install, the process is basically the same, except that I installed mysql without the installer.

Next step up would be a Knoppix-like live cd that you could boot off of, mainly for better performance.

Posted by Jun-Dir Liew

By: Michael Feldstein

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Can you tell me where to find more info about the manual install process? I'd like to try setting up a LAMS-on-a-stick for myself but I'm not skilled at installing or configuring server software.

Thanks!

Posted by Michael Feldstein

By: Michael Feldstein

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In fact, let me press my luck a bit. What I really want to do is get integrated LAMS and Moodle running off of a USB key drive. So, in addition to info on the manual install for LAMS, could you kindly point me to any information about running LAMS and Moodle together? I found the integration code, but what about running them on the same server and database? Are there any potential problems there?

Posted by Michael Feldstein

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Hi Michael,

I'm going to let Jun-Dir reply to the LAMS on a stick part.

However, in principle, LAMS+Moodle on a stick should work no problems and they both can share the same MySQL database. Although Moodle would run with Apache + phpmod and run with JBoss (Tomcat). However, you can have LAMS and Moodle also running on the *same* Apache webserver. Jun-Dir is the expert on all this.

The installation instructions for the LAMS Module for Moodle are here, and here you can find the integration instructions.

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Jun-Dir Liew

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Link to LAMS manual install guide - http://www.lamsinternational.com/documentation/LAMS%201.0.2%20Manual%20Installation.html

The commands in it are linux oriented, but only because linux users don't have a handy installer to take care of things - that's just how I did it though. You could just as easily copy the lams folder from an existing LAMS install to your USB stick - as long as you also copy the database with it. Let me explain:

1. So you've setup LAMS on your Windows PC - Java, MySQL, then LAMS.
2. copy C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 4.1 to your USB stick (it may take a few minutes to copy all the files).
3. copy C:\j2sdk1.4.2_10 to your USB stick.
4. Create a new 'lams' directory on the USB drive - copy C:\lams\jboss and C:\lams\lamsdata to this new directory.

Now, when you take your USB drive to another machine, LAMS will need to know that it should use the Java that is on the USB drive, and not some other Java on the host machine (which may be 1.5, or some other incompatible version).

5. Open C:\lams\jboss\bin\run.bat using Notepad/Wordpad, and just after the 8th line where it says
'set JVM_MEM=-Xms256m -Xmx256m'
paste this line (without the quotes):
'set JAVA_HOME=Q:\j2sdk1.4.2_10'
6. Open a new file in Notepad, and insert this line into it (omit the quotes):
'subst Q: j2sdk1.4.2_10'
and save it as 'path.bat' on your USB drive.
Note: this means that 'Q:' will need to be available in the host machine you use the USB drive in (you can use any letter, but using 'd:' for example wouldn't be wise as it is likely to be occupied already on most machines).
Note: the drive letter *must* be the same as the drive letter in step 5.

Now say you're testing the USB drive on a new machine where it has been given the drive letter 'K'.

7. Start MySQL by double-clicking K:\MySQL Server 4.1\bin\mysqld.exe (if that doesn't work, open a command prompt and type in 'K:\MySQL Server 4.1\bin\mysqld.exe').
8. Double-click K:\path.bat.
9. Start LAMS by double-clicking K:\lams\jboss\bin\run.bat.

And that should be it. Your folder names/drive letters may vary, etc.

To close LAMS before taking out the USB drive, press Ctrl-C in the console windows of MySQL and LAMS. You should also make a 'undopath.bat' to undo the change to the system made by 'path.bat' earlier.
To create undopath.bat, just paste this line into the new file:
'subst Q: /d'
and double-click it whenever you're done with LAMS on a foreign machine.

Posted by Jun-Dir Liew

By: Jun-Dir Liew

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As Ernie said, LAMS and Moodle should have no problem sharing the same MySQL instance (I don't think I'm an expert though). For sure there are plenty of cases where people have run Moodle from a stick, so it should be able to work with LAMS. The only issue (which may or may not be a problem for you) is that Moodle will probably be accessed by http://localhost/moodle, and LAMS by http://localhost:8080/lams. Or maybe you set LAMS to use port 80, and Moodle now needs to use port 80. In any case, the solution to this is to use mod_jk - http://www.lamsinternational.com/documentation/advanced_p.php?g=modjk - where both Moodle and LAMS can be accessed through port 80.

Posted by Jun-Dir Liew