Funambol – first try
Funambol is Open Source software, which act as a server BIS (BlackBerry Internet Server) and provide contacts, calendars, notes and email synchronization with BlackBery devices.
Funambol is not only BIS server – it also provides related projects like plugins to most popular email clients like Outlook or Thunderbird, desktop software provides synchronization of contacts with Mac OS X, Google Mail, Yahoo or Evolution. There are also applications to mobile phones with Symbian, Windows Mobile, Android and for iPhone and others. But at first I will attend synchronization server.
Installation of Funambol server is rather simple, provided that rather streight, especially when You do not do it on Solaris of course 😉
If you want to install Funambol on Solaris you need:
- binary package for 32 bit Linux version, you can get it from page: https://www.forge.funambol.org/download/#server
- computer with Linux installed – yes, with Linux – possible to do it without it, but this is waste of time and work
- server with Solaris installed and recent version of Java, at least 1.6 version
- administrator provilege to install and run server software
Maybe I should simplify you installation and provide here Funambol server software, which you will need only to unpack on Solaris, but at first I do not know if I am allowed to do it (licence), and second this will be out of date fast, I think. But if you want to – I might consider. In the meantime please download installation version for 32 bit Linux to Linux machine, and PDF Funambol Administration Guide with installation and administration instruction wherever you want. There is described installation process for Windows and Linux, we are interested this second one, precisely this part:
(where version is number of Funambol version of course, for today is 8.5.1)
% sh funambol-version.bin
in directory, where Funambol install binary is found. After this licence is shown and you need to accept it to continue installation. Next question is for destination diectory, if you have administrator (root) privileges, you can choose default directory /opt, and if you do not have, then you should choose directory where you have write permission, usually this is home directory, for example, mine is /home/drfugazi. There will be Funambol directory createt and unpacked server instance with all needed stuff. After that you will be asked if you want to run server now. And again, if you are root and you want to check it out, feel free to run it. If not, we can finish installation.
Now you are in doubt why I wrote about doing it on Linux and not on Solaris at once… I clarify right now. At first you will see that ‘sh’ shell on Solaris is not compatible with ‘sh’ on Linux, but this is simply to come around, in place of:
% sh funambol-version.bin
NOTE: I am used to use zsh shell, then user commands will be precede by % sign, and root command by # sign
you can write:
% bash funambol-version.bin
and this is done… but, WTF? ‘tail’ command does not accept one of options, arrrgh, but ok, I have ‘GNU tail’ in /usr/local/bin, why not use this one? Experienced admin do not surrender as fast, he knows that this binary begins with shell script, and there might be PATH variable:
% file funambol-8.5.1.bin funambol-8.5.1.bin: POSIX shell script text executable % grep PATH funambol-8.5.1.bin PATH=/usr/bin:/bin
ok, we can come around this too, we can put /usr/local/bin before rest of path (gsed = GNU sed, similiar gtar = GNU tar)
% gsed -i "s/PATH=\/usr\/bin:\bin/PATH=\/usr\/local\/bin:\/usr\/bin:\/bin/g"
but after that the checksum is counted, and it is counted by /usr/bin/sum (explicite with path), you can change this with sed again or switch off all this block of code, but I was already tired of this and simply I ran this on Linux.
I assume, that you were read and accept the licence and unpack server instance on Linux. Then we can pack now all Funambol directory back (mine was in /home/drfugazi/Funambol) and we should put this on Solaris server.
% tar -czf Funambol.tar.gz Funambol % sftp solaris
Connecting to solaris... sftp> put Funambol.tar.gz Uploading Funambol.tar.gz to /home/drfugazi/Funambol.tar.gz Funambol.tar.gz 100% 204MB 8.5MB/s 00:24 sftp> bye
next we log in to Solaris server and then unpack Funambol to proper location (zone, directory etc.), here I assume that this will be in /opt:
% ssh solaris % /bin/su - Password: # cd /opt # gtar -zxf /home/drfugazi/Funambol.tar.gz
and installation part is done, truth that is simplier? But this is not the end of Solaris flavours 😉
