Administration
Create Offline caGrid 1.3 Installer
If you have trouble installing caGrid due to firewall configuration or because you need to use a proxy, you can create your own caGrid installer that will retrieve files from the local filesystem. The installer typically connects to the Internet to retrieve installation packages (for example, Ant) that are downloaded and installed. Using an offline installer, the installer will instead retrieve these packages from a local directory. This will allow you to install caGrid using the graphical installer.
This article will guide you through the process of creating an offline installer. It is assumed that you have installed caGrid prerequisites. When downloading the prerequisites, be sure to have all the files listed in the manual install section. For this article, you only need to download the prerequisites. You do not need to set your environment variables, as the installer will do that for you. Simply download Java, Ant, etc. to your local filesystem. At this point, you should have the following software distributions on your filesystem:
- Java
- Apache Ant
- Apache Tomcat
- JBoss
- Globus (caGrid-modified Globus distribution)
The rest of this article will detail how to create an installer that uses these prerequisites during installation.
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Download and unzip the caGrid 1.3 Installer
Download the latest caGrid installer. After the download completes, uncompress the installer archive. Unzipping the file will create a new directory: "caGrid-installer-1.3". This documentation refers to this directory as ORIG_CAGRID_INSTALLER.
Download and unzip caGrid installer |
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In the new directory, locate the file cagrid-installer-1.3.jar. Unzip this file to a separate folder. This documentation refers to this new directory as TEMP_CAGRID_INSTALLER.
 | You may need to use an unzipping utility to do this (ie: Winzip, Winrar). You cannot simply open the file as this will start the installer. |
Save the cagrid-1.3.installer.properties file
Locate the file download.properties in the TEMP_CAGRID_INSTALLER directory. When you open this file, you will see that download.url= is pointing to a cagrid-1.3.installer.properties file from a web address. The download.url property specifies the location of the installer properties file that the installer will use to retrieve caGrid dependencies. We need to download the installer properties file before we can continue. To do this, copy and paste the address specified as the value of the download.url= property to a browser location field. Once the page is loaded, right-click in the screen and select Save page as. Save the file in the ORIG_CAGRID_INSTALLER directory.
The cagrid-1.3.installer.properties file |
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Update the download.properties file
We can now change the download.properties file to point to the cagrid-1.3.installer.properties file that we have just downloaded.
In a text editor, open the download.properties file. Change the download.url= pathname to point to the cagrid-1.3.installer.properties file that you downloaded. It should be located in the ORIG_CAGRID_INSTALLER directory. When you are finished, the download.url should look something like the following:
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| Edit the download.properties file |
Notice, that the pathname uses "/" and not "\". Also, be sure to have file:///
before the pathname. This makes the download.properties file point to the local installer file on your machine and not the file on the Internet. Once you have finished editing, SAVE the file.
 | Wordpad should not be used to edit the file as it can cause complications later. Notepad is acceptable to use. |
Update the cagrid-1.3.installer.properties file
Next, we will update the cagrid-1.3.installer.properties file to point to your local files just as we did with the download.properties file. Before you begin this step, make sure that you have downloaded the prerequisites for a manual installation as mentioned earlier. In addition, you will need the caGrid distribution that is referenced in the cagrid-1.3.installer.properties file (located on the line with the cagrid.download.url property).
Locate the cagrid-1.3.installer.properties file in the ORIG_CAGRID_INSTALLER directory. Open the file and find the lines for ant.download.url=, tomcat.download.url=, jboss.download.url=, globus.download.url=, and cagrid.download.url=. These lines are currently pointing to a web address. Change the pathname to the location where the corresponding zip files are located on your local drive.
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| Edit the cagrid-1.3.installer.properties file |
| Once again, notice the "file:///" and the use of "/" in all of the pathnames. As note earlier, Wordpad should not be used for editing. |
Create a new installer
Now that the files have been updated, we can create a new jar file for the installer. Verify that the updated download.properties file is located in the TEMP_CAGRID_INSTALLER directory. The following commands will create a new jar file that includes the updated download.properties file that points to your local cagrid-1.3.installer.properties file.
In a command prompt, type the following command:
> cd TEMP_CAGRID_INSTALLER > jar cmf META-INF/MANIFEST.MF caGrid-installer-1.3.jar *
Make sure that you are creating the jar from the TEMP_CAGRID_INSTALLER location. The new caGrid-installer-1.3.jar will use those files in that directory and also be created there.
Once the jar file is created, we need to use it to replace the original installer that was downloaded. To do this, open the TEMP_CAGRID_INSTALLER directory. Copy the caGrid-installer-1.3.jar that you created. Then paste it into the ORIG_CAGRID_INSTALLER ("caGrid-installer-1.3") directory. When asked if you want to overwrite the existing file, select Yes.
Overwrite caGrid-installer-1.3 |
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Run the Installer and Verify
You can now run the installer using from a command prompt using the following command:
> cd ORIG_CAGRID_INSTALLER > java -jar caGrid-installer-1.3.jar
For walk-through steps using the installer, refer to Install caGrid Using the caGrid 1.3 Installer. To verify that the installer is using your local download.properties file, read the first line of output in the command prompt. If it is downloading the default properties from the cagrid13.installer.properties file on your hard drive, then you have successfully created an offline caGrid 1.3 installer!
Verify that the installer is running locally |
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