Blog

Do you currently have websites built on the Oracle WebCenter Sites product suite? Would you like to leverage your existing WebCenter Sites install to support mobile devices? If you answered yes to both, we are happy to report that there is a great add-on product that will greatly simplify the process of supporting mobile devices.

Here at Function1, we are proud to be industry leaders in implementing websites with WebCenter Sites (formerly Fatwire).  In addition, we are excited to be partnering with Netomat, the leaders in mobile technology for Oracle WebCenter Sites. The Netomat Mobility Server product is truly cutting-edge technology used for providing mobile support for websites built on WebCenter Sites.  Recently, I had the opportunity to create a proof-of-concept for Mobility Server with the help of the awesome folks at Netomat. As a part of this project, I had the opportunity to install Mobility Server on Linux and wanted to pass on the tips.

Before installing Mobility Server, we will need a site within Oracle WebCenter Sites to reference and a MySQL backend database.  If a site doesn't exist, we will need to create a new one via WebCenter Sites so that Mobility Server has a site to turn into a mobile version. Below are complete, detailed instructions on how to install Mobility Server on 32-bit Linux; in addition we have included some hints and workarounds so there are no surprises or pitfalls. Best of luck on all your Mobility Server installations and please don't hesitate to ask questions when you cross that bridge or if you'd like more information on these products!

Proceed with caution: Feel free to skip the remainder of this post unless you're actually installing the Netomat Mobility Server on Linux.

Become root user:

sudo su - root

New version of Linux config file:

rm -rf /etc/selinux/config
echo 'SELINUX=disabled' >> /etc/selinux/config

Upgrade Linux:

yum -y upgrade

Install all necessary Linux packages:

yum -y install php php-pdo php-xml php-tidy php-pear php-pecl-memcache php-pear-HTTP-Request2 php-devel php-mysql httpd mysql mysql-server lynx memcached tidy zlib-devel ImageMagick pcre-devel pcre-static make gcc glibc-devel emacs wget

Update runlevel information:

chkconfig memcached on
chkconfig httpd on
chkconfig mysqld on

Reboot Linux:

reboot

Become root user:

sudo su - root

Make a Mobility Server (MS) directory under /opt/ and navigate there:

mkdir -p /opt/MS/
cd /opt/MS

Get 32-bit Loaders for ioncube encoded files:

wget http://downloads2.ioncube.com/loader_downloads/ioncube_loaders_lin_x86.t...

Unzip the tarball:

tar xzf ioncube_loaders_lin_x86-64.tar.gz

Set some PHP configurations:

echo 'zend_extension = /opt/MS/ioncube/ioncube_loader_lin_5.3.so' >> /etc/php.ini

echo 'date.timezone = America/New_York' >> /etc/php.ini

echo 'extension=zip.so' >> /etc/php.ini

Navigate to root directory:

cd /root

Download the Mobility Server AutoInstaller:

wget 'http://www.netomat.net/dlcontroller? hash=fwms_2.2forcesports_pre' --http-user=[user] --http- password=[password] -O autoinstaller.tar.gz

Extract the AutoInstaller and other files:

tar xzf autoinstaller.tar.gz
tar xvf fwms.tar

Set up Apache directory:

cp *.conf /etc/httpd/conf.d/

Navigate to the following directory and untar Mobility Server and MS Admin tarfiles:

cd /var/www/html/
tar xvf /root/mobility.tar.gz
tar xvf /root/cswem.tar.gz

Create necessary directories:

mkdir -p /var/www/html/mobilityserver/images/Asset/
mkdir -p /var/www/html/msadmin/cache
mkdir -p /var/www/html/mobilityserver/cache

Adjust file permissions:

chmod -R 777 /var/www/html/mobilityserver/cache/
chmod -R 777 /var/www/html/mobilityserver/web/cache/
chmod -R 777 /var/www/html/mobilityserver/log/
chmod -R 777 /var/www/html/mobilityserver/images/Asset/
chmod -R 777 /var/www/html/msadmin/cache/

Next, create two blank MySQL databases, one for MobilityServer and one for MSAdmin.  We can name them whatever we want and authenticate them however we want, but please keep easy naming conventions and proper security in mind.  To hook Mobility Server into the new databases, the “prod” section in both the following files should be edited to match your database configurations:

• /var/www/html/mobilityserver/config/databases.yml
• /var/www/ html/msadmin/config/databases.yml

• /var/www/html/mobilityserver/apps/frontend/config/app.yml
• /var/www/html/msadmin/apps/netowem/config/app.yml

cd /var/www/html/mobilityserver
php symfony doctrine:build --all --and-load --env=prod

Populate the database for MS Admin:

cd /var/www/html/msadmin
php symfony doctrine:build --all --and-load --env=prod

Then, register Oracle WebCenter Sites with MS Admin and Mobility Server:

cd /var/www/html/msadmin
php symfony mobilityserver:configure --env=prod
php symfony mobilityserver:createapplication --env=prod
cd /var/www/html/mobilityserver
php symfony mobilityserver:configure --env=prod
php symfony mobilityserver:parsedevicedb --env=prod

If everything has gone well, we can now start Apache and perform a quick test.  The argument in bold should be changed to your Mobility Server IP or hostname:

/etc/init.d/httpd start

cd /var/www/html/mobilityserver

php symfony mobilityserver:testinstall --env=prod --host=internalms.customer.com:80

Mobility Server Admin (MS Admin) is the user interface via which one configures and administers Mobility Server. Once installed, you can bring up MS Admin via "http://a.ms" to complete the recommended configuration changes.