Apache Shindig - Let's Get Social

As I've been harping on at IBM for them to support OpenSocial in products such as Lotus Connections I decided to have a play with Apache Shindig and the first steps are obviously to get it installed.

I'm using Ubunutu 9.10 and nabbed the following files:

• Java Sun JRE 6.0_17
• Apache Tomcat 6.0.20
• Apache Shindig shindig-server-1.1-BETA5-incubating.war

Install Java

user@my-netbook: cp ~user/Downloads/jre-6u17-linux-i586.bin /usr/local/
user@my-netbook: cd /usr/local
user@my-netbook: ./jre-6u17-linux-i586.bin
user@my-netbook: ln -s jre1.6.0_17 java

I want the JAVA_HOME and JRE_HOME environment variables available to all users so I create the following file:

user@my-netbook: sudo vi /etc/profile.d/java.sh

and populate it with the following contents:

JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/java
export JAVA_HOME

JRE_HOME=/usr/local/java
export JRE_HOME

PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin
export PATH

Install Tomcat

user@my-netbook: cp ~user/Downloads/apache-tomcat-6.0.20.tar.gz /usr/local/
user@my-netbook: cd /usr/local
user@my-netbook: tar -xzvf apache-tomcat-6.0.20.tar.gz
user@my-netbook: ln -s apache-tomcat-6.0.20 tomcat

Then check that Tomcat starts ok:

user@my-netbook: cd /usr/local/tomcat/bin
user@my-netbook: ./startup.sh

and check you can access http://localhost:8080, where you should see:

Now shutdown Tomcat:

user@my-netbook: cd /usr/local/tomcat/bin
user@my-netbook: ./shutdown.sh

Install Shindig

user@my-netbook: cd /usr/local/tomcat/webapps
user@my-netbook: mv ROOT/ ROOT.BCK
user@my-netbook: cp ~user/Downloads/shindig-server-1.1-BETA5-incubating.war /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/ROOT.WAR
user@my-netbook: /usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh

Check that Shindig is working by visiting the following URL in your browser:

http://localhost:8080/gadgets/ifr?url=http://www.labpixies.com/campaigns/todo/todo.xml

and you should see:

Hopefully that should be it.