Need to get a popular open source application up and running quickly? Maybe you want to try out WordPress or Joomla but don’t know how to get started?
Bitnami has this figured out. Bitnami offers what they call ‘stacks’. You can either download an application ‘stack’ like Drupal, WordPress, etc. Or you can download a platform ‘stack’ (WAMP = Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and then download application modules for that particular stack.
Sample Bitnami Applications
At work we’ve been looking at various bug trackers and I wanted to get Mantis setup and running but didn’t want to spend a lot of time getting it up and running. After a bit of Googling I found Bitnami and gave it a try.
Installation was a breeze. I ran the installer and only had to define a port for Apache to run on (I selected 88 so it didn’t conflict with my ColdFusion install) and a default username and password for login. Installation took awhile – it IS installing quite a bit of stuff. When it was done I simply hit my localhost and Mantis was up and running!
Bitnami does provide an uninstaller which seems to clean up after itself fairly well. I first installed the Mantis stack but realized it had some drawbacks. If you download for example the WordPress application stack and set it to port 88 and then try to install another application stack you will have to provide another port. It sets each application up independently. To get around this they offer the platform stacks like WAMP. Now you can install that as your base and then install multiple application ‘modules’ on top of it – all sharing one port.
Bitnami is free and stacks are available for Windows, Linux, Mac and Solaris.
Jim,
Do you know of any reason this wouldn’t work on a virtual machine.
This is great. Reminds me of Pulse for Eclipse. (http://www.poweredbypulse.com). Same idea: you select the configuration of Eclipse, say with CFEclipse, Subversion, Mylyn, etc., and you can save it as a profile, and install it in minutes on whatever machine you are placed in front of.
I like this idea. Thanks for the heads up!
I much prefer jump boxes for this kind of stuff. They create virtual machine images for VMWare, parallels and soon I think Amazon ec2.
No extra configuration, no installation on your machine. And then you can play with the software to your hearts content.
No pain, no fuss. Check them out. http://www.jumpbox.com/
JumpBox does look cool and I agree running it in a VM is nice because it doesn’t install anything on your local box.
Big thing for me was I couldn’t justify the subscription cost for a quick evaluation… If I was actually deploying it then JumpBox would look much more attractive.
Probably the best of both worlds would be to install your Bitnami stack on an OS running in a VM. :)
Thats the best part. Jump boxes are free. You only pay for subscriptions if you want support.
You can run them all you like for nothing. You can even get vmware player for free and use them to your hearts content for no money.
its really slick.
Aha! Well that rocks! What about running multiple projects? For example I want to run Mantis and WordPress? Can you do that within one JumpBox?
Running multiple instances I think can only done with the subscriptions.
And there are some functionalities of the jumpboxes that are not enabled without a subscription. (ssh and backup for instance)
But if you want to just grab and test some software its hard to beat. Download, open the vm and you are running. Its really great.
@Michael – Bitnami should run fine in a VM I would think…
Just for the record, BitNami provides now Virtual Machines and Amazon Cloud Images. Thanks for the nice review!
The TurnKey Linux Virtual Appliance library is another option for fast deployment of open source software. It’s an open source project developing a free virtual appliance library of pre-packaged servers (40 at time of writing) based on Ubuntu that deploy on bare metal, a virtual machine, and in the cloud (Amazon EC2).
http://www.turnkeylinux.org/
Highlights:
* Secure and easy to maintain: auto-updated daily with security patches.
* Easy to use: includes a configuration console and web management interface.
* Lightweight: built from the ground up with the minimum required components.
* Runs everywhere: available as VMDK with OVF support, installable Live CD, and Amazon EC2 AMI.
* 100% open source: free from expensive and restrictive proprietary licensing.
Check it out!
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