Flex Apache module hell
Yesterday I tried to install the flex sdk apache module on the linux server of one of my clients. Note “tried”.
Problem 1: The Java JRE isn’t super easy to install. Well, actually it is, but you just have to realize how to do it and the information out there is quite misleading. I’m no Linux nerd although I can handle a linux server fairly well. This server was a Debian Etch server, so my hopes were quite high. Apt-get is a good tool. The reason the info was so misleading is that all the articles I could found out there in “space” told me you cannot use apt-get to install the Java run-time because of some Sun legal policy. This is not correct. Since sometime in 2005 you can use apt-get to install Java, however you have to add the non-free repository to the sources.list file. Finally I found out how to do it.
Problem 2: The information in the Flex SDK about the apache module is slight to say the least. It is almost essential to find a third party tutorial on some blog to figure out how to set it up. One thing I hate about Adobe, which could be a result of the multitude of information they’re hosting, is the fact that all pages refer to other pages, and some of those pages refer back to the first page and so on and so forth.
Final problem: So I finally performed a manual install of the Flex SDK for Linux! Wohoo! or… not…
The final step is to restart the Apache server. “Nope. I won’t restart” he said, sneerfully. “You are missing an essential thing called GLIBC_2.4. You need that to be able to run the mod_flex.so! Ha ha!”.
In search of such a thing and why it wasn’t already there I found out that the glibc library only exist up to version 2.3 for Debian.
Conclusion
I can’t use the f*king apache module at all and will have to compile my Flex application locally and upload to the server. Too bad, because that will not be easy giving the fact that I’m not alone in this project. The whole idea behind this new project we’re on was creating an online application we could build together.
If someone out there has made this work and can help me out… PLEASE HELP!
Chears
Daniel
Igor (Russia) said,
Wrote on July 18, 2008 @ 4:34 pm
Hello, Daniel. I have this problem too, but on ASPLINUX (RHL4 clon). In the net library glibc have on version > 2.8.xxx but
I have in my distrib ASPLINUX glib=2.3.xx and i can’t install him, becase there is conlictions.
I think this problem more globally …
Sean Champ said,
Wrote on January 4, 2010 @ 7:28 pm
For general reference purposes, I’ve found one Linux Macromedia Flex on Tomcat-HOWTO, at http://members.cox.net/midian/howto/flex+tomcat.htm
As far as GLIBC requirements, maybe it could be that your client’s Debian installation would have needed an update to a newer Debian release, so in order to run the Flex package you were using, as provided by Adobe.
I’d like to guess that there would’ve been a newer GLIBC available in the Debian Lenny distribution, at the time – the next Debian distro after Etch, of course – or in the general ‘testing’ or ‘unstable’ distributions, at the time.
Granted, I haven’t stepped through that HOWTO myself, here, but it looks to be pretty simple, I think.
I’d chanced upon this older web-log entry, in the process of locating that HOWTO – as it turned out. Now that I found that resource, I thought I’d mention it here, as well as the thought about GLIBC versioning, in case it could be of help, towards a further understanding of the issue. Happy new year’s into 2010. Cheers.