My IBM Worklight Studio Software Appliance via SUSE Studio

Its been quite a while since I've created any software appliance via SUSE Studio.  This blog entry describes the motivation behind and the details of my IBM Worklight Studio Developer Edition software appliance created via SUSE Studio.

Background

IBM Worklight is the mobile application platform that is part of the IBM MobileFirst solution.

IBM Worklight Studio is the development tool for creating web, hybrid or native mobile apps that runs on the IBM Worklight platform.  IBM developerWorks also host resources on working with IBM Worklight, here and here.

IBM Worklight Studio Developer Edition V6, release in June 2013, is freely available as a plugin on top of Eclipse Juno V4.2.2.  Also freely available, is the Rational Test Workbench plugin that provides functional testing of mobile applications created by Worklight Studio.  Both plugins can be found on the Eclipse Marketplace.

* From this point forward, I will use "IBM Worklight Studio" to mean the IBM Worklight Studio Developer Edition for the rest of this blog entry *

Motivation

The installation and configuration of IBM Worklight Studio and the Android SDK will take at least an hour or two. This is very much dependent on your network download speed and readiness of your OS/machine (or virtual machine).  

By the time your IBM Worklight Studio and the Android SDK is ready for action, you will probably opt to go for a coffee break first.  :)

Therefore, to shorten the time to evaluation and also improve productivity of fellow developers out there who wants to focus on evaluating the tool from a development perspective, I thought a software appliance with everything pre-installed and configured would be helpful.  

Since I cannot give out Windows or Mac OS virtual images without running into license infringement issues, I chose to use SUSE Studio to construct a openSUSE based virtual machine with all the required IBM Worklight Studio components installed and ready to go.

Link to my Appliances

I have created two editions of my software appliance:

RTR - Ready to Rock edition (Link)

ARTR - Almost Ready to Rock edition (Link)

The RTR edition is a complete and ready to go stack with all software installed and configured.  I have also included a library of tutorials downloaded from IBM developerWorks on the subject.  You can start developing your first mobile app straight away and can deploy that onto the Android Emulator.  If you have an Android phone connected via USB to the VM, you can also deploy your mobile app onto your Android phone for testing.  However, the size of the appliance download is 2.4Gb (compressed).

The ARTR edition has a smaller footprint of only 1.5Gb (compressed).  However, you only have Eclipse Juno V4.2.2 installed and you will need to install the IBM Worklight Studio plugins on your own.  The effort is not strenuous for the operator but you'll need good Internet download speed to install the plugins via the Eclipse Marketplace.  All tutorials on installation are included in the Tutorials folder to help guide you through the process.

PS:  For those who are new to SUSE Studio, you do not need to sit around and wait for the download to complete before you can see the appliance in action.  Use the Testdrive option to have it provisioned in the Cloud for an hour and you can interact with it remotely from your web browser.  

That's all for now.  Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment on the SUSE Studio Marketplace or here on my blog.  

Have Fun!

PS:  Happy Father's Day to Australians who celebrate it on this day.

My openSUSE 12 Journal 14: IBM Notes 9 on 12.3

Syed Tassawur Hussain, this is for you.  Thank you for prodding and giving me the motivation to complete this blog entry on how to install the GA version of IBM Notes 9 Social Edition.

Back in the days of using 12.2, IBM Notes 9 was in Beta and I have blogged about how I installed and configured this combination here.

With my move to 12.3, I was going to install the now GA version of IBM Notes 9.  Given how impressed I was with 12.3, and all the additional software and customizations applied in 12.2 seems to transfer seemlessly to 12.3, I was naturally mildly surprised (and annoyed) that installation of IBM Notes 9 did not go quite as smoothly as Notes 9 Beta on 12.2.

Let me jump to the crux of the matter, one particular library (libjpeg62) has been removed from the media and default online repositories of 12.3.  This libjpeg62 was previously in 12.2 and earlier versions of openSUSE.  As such, IBM Notes 9 installer and even zypper were not able to install execute successfully.

Here's how I arrive at this conclusion and was able to successfully install IBM Notes 9 on openSUSE 12.3.  While I have not tried this on the enterprise flavour of openSUSE (ie SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11), should you encounter the same challenges, the steps below may be of help.

My openSUSE 12 Journal 13: NetworkManager Config for Cisco LEAP Wireless

This is my 100th blog entry!  

In short, I wasted a few days and a weekend to get my shiny new 12.3 to connect with my company's Cisco LEAP (henceforth referred to as just LEAP) wireless network.

For those who do not have a requirement to connect to wifi via LEAP but are curious anyways, please see this link for LEAP.

To save you the same grief, here is the answer (see screenshot below) on how to configure NetworkManager:

The one on the Left WORKED; the one on the Right did NOT work for me

Disclaimer: Your mileage may vary (YMMV) because I did not test this against another LEAP wifi network outside of my company's implementation.

My openSUSE 12 Journal 12: Hello 12.3!

Hello openSUSE 12.3!  You were released into the big bad world on 13 March 2013 and you are fantastic!


Two weeks back, I installed 12.3 onto a new partition on my primary workstation/laptop in one hour.  By the hour thereafter, and I do need to install quite a handful of additional software, I was working on my day job without skipping a beat.  One of the software that is critical to my job is IBM Notes 9 Social Edition. As covered in my previous blog entry on the beta, IBM Notes 9 has been officially released on 2 March 2013.  Look out for my next blog entry on installing the Generally Available(GA) version of IBM Notes 9 Social Edition on openSUSE 12.3.

Hand on my heart, 12.3 is a very worthy successor to 12.2.  I am very happy with it, and if you know me, that says alot... BUT... there is one little usage/design point with the GUI of NetworkManager that got me confused and I was unable to get onto my office's Cisco LEAP wireless network.  This was resolved eventually (after 3 days and a weekend) and it turns out to be a non-issue... or a usage issue... or... anyway, look out for this in my next entry.

Installation and Partitioning