install tomcat8 from Apache binaries for centos

[seth-shaw-unlv]

Addresses issue #2

Integrates DigitLib's work into a single role that supports both Debian and CentOS. Installs Tomcat8 from source on CentOS machines.

[whikloj]

So the config-Debian and config-Redhat seem like they could be one file, we can probably use the templated server.xml for Debian too. If not just add a when: ansible_os_family == 'RedHat' to that task.

Also since you added a RedHat vars file, why not add a Debian one and get rid of this conditional?

Spit balling here as I haven't tried to run it yet.

[seth-shaw-unlv]

I'll play with it a little bit and probably report back on Monday. Constantly reprovisioning takes time, especially when switching distros.

[seth-shaw-unlv]

Would have had this in on Monday but I was unexpectedly out of the office. Anyway, I took @whikloj 's suggestions for tidying up the role. Let me know if there is anything else I could improve on it.

[whikloj]

👍 nice I'll try to spin up a box shortly.

[seth-shaw-unlv]

The PR also addresses this issue on the CLAW repo.

[seth-shaw-unlv]

Newest commit changes the Tomcat version to the 8.5.x branch. Partially addressing issue #4 (Tomcat 8.0.x EOL).

[whikloj]

vagrant up

[jonathangreen]

Should probably conditionally set the variables here, as we did in Karaf, so they can be overridden.

Maybe some comments in the defaults as well...

I know the Karaf stuff just went in this afternoon, just wanted to make a note here so it doesn't get forgotten.

[seth-shaw-unlv]

done

[jonathangreen]

This is kind of a nitpick, so feel free to ignore, but I find jinja templates way easier to read with spaces after the opening delimiter and before the closing delimiter like this:
{{ tomcat8_java_opts|join(' ') }}

[seth-shaw-unlv]

done

[jonathangreen]

I wonder if we should split up (maybe just with comments) the default/main.yml file, so its clear what variables are applied when using Cent and Ubuntu.

Right now we have variables like tomcat8_logfile_compress: 1 that only apply in Ubuntu installs.

Maybe just something like:

# ---- Ubuntu ----
# These variables are only used when installing on Ubuntu

# Java compiler to use for translating JavaServer Pages (JSPs). You can use all
# compilers that are accepted by Ant's build.compiler property.
tomcat8_jsp_compiler: javac

# Use the Java security manager? (yes/no, default: no)
tomcat8_tomcat8_security: "no"

# Number of days to keep logfiles in /var/log/tomcat8. Default is 14 days.
tomcat8_logfile_days: 14

# Whether to compress logfiles older than today's
tomcat8_logfile_compress: 1

# Location of the JVM temporary directory
# WARNING: This directory will be destroyed and recreated at every startup !
#tomcat8_jvm_tmp: /tmp/tomcat8-temp

# If you run Tomcat on port numbers that are all higher than 1023, then you
# do not need authbind.  It is used for binding Tomcat to lower port numbers.
# (yes/no, default: no)
tomcat8_authbind: no

[whikloj]

@seth-shaw-unlv I'm getting this

failed: [default] (item=libapache2-mod-php7.0) => {"changed": false, "failed": true, "item": "libapache2-mod-php7.0", "msg": "No package matching 'libapache2-mod-php7.0' found available, installed or updated", "rc": 126, "results": ["No package matching 'libapache2-mod-php7.0' found available, installed or updated"]}
failed: [default] (item=php7.0-mysql) => {"changed": false, "failed": true, "item": "php7.0-mysql", "msg": "No package matching 'php7.0-mysql' found available, installed or updated", "rc": 126, "results": ["No package matching 'php7.0-mysql' found available, installed or updated"]}
failed: [default] (item=php7.0-pgsql) => {"changed": false, "failed": true, "item": "php7.0-pgsql", "msg": "No package matching 'php7.0-pgsql' found available, installed or updated", "rc": 126, "results": ["No package matching 'php7.0-pgsql' found available, installed or updated"]}

[seth-shaw-unlv]

@whikloj Do you have the repo-remi PR applied to your test?

[whikloj]

@seth-shaw-unlv yes I do, it is weird to me.

Maybe we need other of the remi-repos installed? This worked when I tested it.

But now

[vagrant@claw ~]$ sudo yum search libapache2-mod-php7.0
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * base: muug.ca
 * epel: muug.ca
 * extras: mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca
 * remi-safe: mirror.team-cymru.org
 * updates: centos.les.net
Warning: No matches found for: libapache2-mod-php7.0
No matches found

I don't think Centos uses libapache2-mod-php7.0 I think this is an Ubuntu thing. So maybe something in pulling this tomcat role overtop of claw-playbook master has messed something up?

[seth-shaw-unlv]

Hmm... BTW, did you include crayfish in this build? The crayfish.yml in claw-playbook also calls geerlingguy.php and that might have caused the problem. Comment out this line and try again.

[whikloj]

Hmmm I think this is due to overlapping, I seem to have the two new php-DISTRO.yml file but still have the original php.yml file too.

[whikloj]

@seth-shaw-unlv @jonathangreen @dannylamb
So I couldn't figure out why you needed to set __tomcat8_home variables to set tomcat8_home? I thought ansible allowed you to override the variables by assigning them in the group_vars? But apparently Ansible says that if you include a role's vars then they are more important that the inventory/vagrant/group_vars?!

Am I correct?

I'm starting to see Ansible as a huge pain for all this tweaking to make 2 OSes work.

[jonathangreen]

@whikloj yes you are correct, that is what we are doing with the variables and why.

As for Ansible, as the old saying goes: familiarity breeds contempt? 🤷‍♂️
Not sure a better way to approach it really... I think there is a lot of value in having these configs to bring up boxes.

[whikloj]

@jonathangreen yeah I guess, the decision for variable precendence where the actual inventory are at the low end of priority seems counter-intuitive. The defaults are low, but if you want to include vars (like separate ones for each OS) then suddenly you are unable to override those from your inventory.

Long whining story short. I guess we need to make a ticket to unset all the defaults in our roles and add a task to use the loaded vars file with the same __variable structure, if they aren't already set.

[seth-shaw-unlv]

Actually, the way we have it now, the variables prefixed by an underscore are only set in the vars/* so our defaults and group_vars still work as expected (vars/* with underscored prefix is ignored if we have either defaults or group_vars; group_vars takes precedence over defaults). Adding the underscore prefixes to the defaults/main.yml and README was a mistake now corrected.

@whikloj yeah, I've just spent about a month fighting that battle.

[whikloj]

@seth-shaw-unlv can you rebase this to fix this conflict and I'll try it again and see if I can't start clearing out these Centos PRs

[seth-shaw-unlv]

@whikloj Well, I think I did that right.

[whikloj]

@seth-shaw-unlv this is good to merge, but can I get a follow-up PR on claw-playbook to fix this line.
We actually need to add a second variable as the defaults from ansible-role-fcrepo-syn no longer work. So we need

fcrepo_syn_default_public_key_path: "{{ tomcat8_home }}/conf/public.key"
fcrepo_syn_tomcat_home: "{{ tomcat8_home }}"

I'll fix up that role later to not need to overwrite two variables, but for now we do need that.
If you can add that PR, then I'll be good to merge them both.

[whikloj]

@seth-shaw-unlv I'm going to merge this and tag it as 0.0.2 so if you could also add to your above claw-playbook PR to update the requirements.yml to need version 0.0.2 of this role.

[DigitLib]

tomcat8_home in /vars/RedHat.yml need to change to /var/lib/tomcat8 because of later roles which have defined that path.