Apache httpd module

This module allows the Grassroots infrastructure to be used with an Apache httpd web server. This means that the Grassroots infrastructure can take advantage of all of the functionality that httpd provides.

Installation

To build this module, you need the grassroots core and grassroots build config installed and configured.

The files to build the Grassroots module are in the build/unix/<platform> directory.

Linux and Mac

The platform build files are in the `unix/' directory where platform is either linux or mac. If you enter the appropriate directory

cd build/unix/linux

or

cd build/unix/mac

you can then build the service by typing

make all

and then

make install

to install the module into the appropriate httpd installation allowing the Grassroots system to be used in conjunction with it.

Windows

For Windows use the visual studio project in the build/windows folder.

Configuration

As well as installing the module, httpd requires a couple of alterations to allow the Grassroots system to be available.

Module configuration file

The first change is to set up the module configuration. This is done using a standard httpd configuration file and an example is at conf/grassroots.conf in this repository. It requires some modules to provide the caching functionality to store job data between requests in a multi-process and multi-threaded environment

The only parts that a server administrator would need to change are what uri to use for the Grassroots system and the directory in which the Grassroots system is installed.

The uri is set using the standard httpd directives such as <Location> and <LocationMatch> and the installation directory is specified using the GrassrootsRoot directive which takes a string denoting the path. The content of an example configuration is file is shown below.

The available configuration properties are described below:

• GrassrootsRoot*: This is required and is the path to the Grassroots installation
• GrassrootsConfig: The config file to use for this Grassroots Server. If omitted, this will default to being grassroots.config within the directory specified by the GrassrootsRoot directive.
• GrassrootsServicesConfigPath: The path to the individual services config files. If omitted, this will default to being config within the directory specified by the GrassrootsRoot directive.
• GrassrootsServicesPath: The path to the service module files. If omitted, this will default to being services within the directory specified by the GrassrootsRoot directive.
• GrassrootsReferenceServicesPath: The path to the referred service files. If omitted, this will default to being references within the directory specified by the GrassrootsRoot directive.
• GrassrootsServersManager: The path to the Grassroots Servers Manager Module to use. Leave this blank to use the default.
• GrassrootsServersManagersPath: The path to the service module files. If omitted, this will default to being servers within the directory specified by the GrassrootsRoot directive.
• GrassrootsJobManager: The path to the Grassroots Jobs Manager Module to use Leave this blank to use the default.
• GrassrootsJobsManagersPath: The path to the service module files. If omitted, this will default to being jobs_managers within the directory specified by the GrassrootsRoot directive.

An example file is listed below that specfies that Grassoots is installed in the /opt/grassroots folder and that it Grassroots will be used for requests to /grassroots/controller. The global configuration file to be used is my_config and the folder containing the services configuration files is called my_config_files.

#
# Load the Grassroots module and the caching modules required
# for storing persistent data when the server is running
#
LoadModule grassroots_module modules/mod_grassroots.so
LoadModule cache_module modules/mod_cache.so
LoadModule cache_socache_module modules/mod_cache_socache.so
LoadModule socache_shmcb_module modules/mod_socache_shmcb.so

#
# Set the caching preferences for storing the persistent data
#
CacheSocache shmcb
CacheSocacheMaxSize 102400

#
# Set the uri for the Grassroots infrastructure requests
# to /grassroots/controller
<LocationMatch "/grassroots/controller">
	
	# Let Grassroots handle these requests
	SetHandler grassroots-handler
	
	# The path to the Grassroots root directory 
	GrassrootsRoot /opt/grassroots

	# The global configuration file to use
	GrassrootsConfig my_config

	# The path to the service configuration files
	GrassrootsServicesConfigPath my_config_files
</LocationMatch>

Updating envvars

The Apache httpd server also needs to have access to the paths where the Grassroots infrastructure and its dependencies are located. This is done be editing the envvars file that is part of the httpd distribution and is normally located at bin/envvars.

# Begin Grassroots

# Set the Grassroots installation path
GRASSROOTS_PATH=/opt/grassroots-0/grassroots

# Add all of the paths for the dependencies
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$GRASSROOTS_PATH/lib"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$GRASSROOTS_PATH/extras/mongodb-c/lib"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$GRASSROOTS_PATH/extras/samtools/lib"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$GRASSROOTS_PATH/extras/htmlcxx/lib"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$GRASSROOTS_PATH/extras/hcxselect/lib"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$GRASSROOTS_PATH/extras/irods/lib"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$GRASSROOTS_PATH/extras/slurm_drmaa/lib"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$GRASSROOTS_PATH/extras/jansson/lib"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$GRASSROOTS_PATH/extras/blast/lib"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$GRASSROOTS_PATH/extras/libuuid/lib"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$GRASSROOTS_PATH/extras/dropbox-c/lib"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$GRASSROOTS_PATH/extras/liboauth/lib"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$GRASSROOTS_PATH/extras/pcre/lib"

# End Grassroots