My paid work involves setting up JBoss/Java environments for a software company to drop in their WAR or EAR file into.
Btw I hate Java. But since I think Debian must compete as a Web application platform, those Debian Java packagers get my respect. It is a crap job, but an important one.
Many people seem to setup Java and JBoss by hand.
It works OK, if you stick to a couple of conventions and use symlinks.
I prefer packages and since deployment platforms tend to be Red Hat Enterprise since Oracle “certifies” the platform, I investigated RPMs (again).
OMG, I hate RPM.
Or perhaps the piss poor package lists. Used RPMSEEK and RPMFIND? Loser.
Or is it the quality of the packages?
Or maybe it is YUM. I apt-get wannabe that runs like a pig.
Anyway, I gave Jpackage and its RPMs a really good try over a week. But ended up doing the same thing in Debian (sarge) in about 20 minutes. You need contrib and non-free in your /etc/apt/sources.list.
apt-get install java-package
fakeroot make-jpkg jdk-1_5_0_03-linux-i586.bin
Install sun-j2sdk1.5_1.5.0+update03_i386.deb and then I (cheat!) apt-get Jboss4 from an unofficial repo at http://linley.Informatik.TU-Cottbus.DE/debian/
Conclusion: Since I have to use Red Hat, I am going to setup the RH’s environment by hand. I will probably use a Debian system to build/test the Java bean/package/(whatever it’s called) before I drop it into the live server.
Oh, come on. Don’t you know that apt works fine on Red Hat boxes, pretty much exactly
the way it does on Debian?
Just download it and install it, and it might be the last RPM you install with the “rpm”
command.
Can you find apt for Red Hat Enterprise server 4?
I tried:
http://freshrpms.net/apt/
Should be easy to recompile http://fedoraproject.org/extras/3/i386/repodata/repoview/apt-0–0.5.15cnc7–1.html
this one. Donno exactly where you can find the src.rpm but the dependency tweaking and recompile is nothing hard to accomplish. Maybe you would like to take also a look at smartpm.org cause apt-rpm development has stopped and Gustavo is now working on smartpm. If you need help ask google or aehm maybe write me mail 
http://fedoraproject.org/extras/3/SRPMS/apt-0.5.15cnc7–1.src.rpm
Ah found the src.rpm, sorry for spamming your blog comments with useless posts.
This is an old post, but it came up in Google and so still seems “relevant.”
Just wanted to say that up2date in RHEL 3 and 4 natively supports yum and apt repositories, just list them in the sources file.
Personally, I use Debian and recommend it to everyone, but if up2date (and smart or whatever some of the other packagers are these days) are used properly, it is passable. Still nowhere near Debian quality nor breadth, but a good enough start.
Hi,
I am using debian etch (4.0) and I would like to ask what the repository I will must put in the my sources.list to make “apt-get install jboss” work. And whats the exact name of the package?
Excuse for the qualityof my english .
thanks a lot,
wagner