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We have been working with a client who wanted to be able to install a new website on their IBMi. The new website was developed on another OS using cake PHP by a development company that had no idea about how to set up a web server on an IBMi so we were asked to help them implement the new site.
The companies old site did in fact run on the IBMi but was not written in PHP and was mainly composed of static pages with some parts that needed CGI access to run. The initial request stated that these CGI generated pages were no longer needed so we did not have to worry about setting them up. They had looked at Zend Server in the past and rejected using it due to its complexity so we had the opportunity to start fresh and just install the iAMP server.
At first we set up test sites just to make sure the server ran and we had no problems setting up VirtualHosting. We did this on a new IP address so it did not impact the current site which was being run from the same saver. We could have used the same IP address and a different port but that is just plain ugly! We also needed a MySQL instance because the content management used the MySQL database to store the page data, an admin feature allowed the content to be changed via an editor which updated in the MySQL database when it was finished.
Everything went OK and we managed to import the MySQL database which contained all of the web page content so far with a few issues which we soon worked around. On starting the web server everything looked OK but we found the links in the navigation objects were all screwed up, a quick fix from the developers soon fixed that and the site appeared to be running just fine.
At this point the client said OK lets go live! They wanted the new site up and running in the wild straight away. Although this was quite a leap of faith all we had to do at this point was change the new configurations to the run on the original servers IP address, stop the existing server and bring the new iAMP server online. This went through without any hitches and the new site was up and running in the wild.
We thought everything was OK but when we tried to use the Admin functions (which are important to the client because it allowed them to control the content of their webpages through a user friendly interface) we hit our first problem. In the code they had a function which uses sockets to talk back to the HTTP server, this request hung every time it was called. The messages in the logs did not help much in finding out exactly what the problem was so it was Google to the rescue. We found a post to a forum about a different problem but the description of the resolution gave us the idea of where to look. The problem was the socket tried to connect to the external interface of the HTTP server, the firewall (like all good firewalls) stopped the connection because it determined the request was coming from the LAN to the WAN and back to the same LAN. We did not want to change the firewall rules to allow this connectivity so we had to come up with another option. The solution was pretty simple, we added a host table entry to the IBMi that pointed all requests for the website address to the internal IP address, this meant any request from the HTTP server to the company website would go to the internal IP address of the IBMi not the external one defined in the DNS. After this the admin function worked and we move on.
The next challenge came when we found out that despite being told otherwise, one of the functions in the website required a call to a CGI script. We thought we could just configure the iAMP server to run the request by configuring the CGI module etc. That did not work. The output said it was a permissions error which lead us down a long and fruitless path of looking at the permission on each of the objects etc. but as we discovered the problem was because PASE programs cannot call a Native IBMi program.
This meant we needed a copy of the IBM HTTP server running which we could use to serve the CGI generated content. Setting up the IBM HTTP server was pretty simple as we had just removed the old site from the configs and another internal site was still running on it. We just added a new configuration and ran it against a separate port. The version of the iAMP Server we had installed did not have proxy support so we had to come up with an alternative while Aura could create and test the additional modules required for proxy support. The solution we eventually came up with had one draw back in that we had to open the port the new website was using in the firewall, this allowed the request to be routed from the iAMP server back to the correct port on the IBM HTTP server but we did not like having to open more ports in the firewall. Once we had everything configured the CGI processes all worked and the client was again happy with their solution.
When we received the new code from Aura for iAMP with Proxy support we upgraded the server and set up the link to the IBMi server using the ProxyPass and ProxyReverse statements in just the same way you had to configure ZendCore. We also added the new modules into the base config and after some false starts we had the site back up and running with the proxy support and we could remove the additional open port from the firewall.
If you need to have an AMP stack on the IBMi you now have the option of using the iAMP Server or Zend Server, iAMP is a free download from the Aura Equipments website. Support for iAMP is provided free of charge via the Aura forums but you can also request full support for the product from Aura for a very low fee. As an incentive Aura are also offering to inlcude the support costs for iAMP with Easycom so you will have one support structure or all your AMP stack plus the Easycom i5_toolkit for one very low fee. The same setup for Zend requires you to enter into a support contract with Zend for their Server, a support contract with another company for ZendDBi (MySQL) plus a non supported open source solution for the i5_toolkit server. I know which one I think is the better option.
If you have any questions about running iAMP or would like to know more about Easycom for PHP i5_Toolkit gives us a call, you may surprised just how cost effective our solution for running AMP on the IBMi is. Even if you are running an AMP stack on Linux or Windows, Easycom will allow the same i5_toolkit functions to run on those stacks in exactly the same way they do on the IBMi, don’t just integrate, innovate…
Chris…