Difference between revisions of "Building FRANKLIN on CentOS 5"

Revision as of 08:40, 16 December 2008

Introduction

Building Zimbra from source is necessary if we want to make modifications to it. The binary release of the so-called open source version is released under a restrictive ZEULA (Zimbra End-user License Agreement), which disallows any modifications. Building Zimbra from source allows us to use the less restrictive YPL 1.1 (Yahoo Public License). Even though the YPL 1.1 is not an OSI-approved license, it still allows modifications. It is "badgeware", though, meaning that Zimbra/Yahoo logos need to be included in any modifications.

The build process for Zimbra is poorly documented. You won't find many useful articles from the Zimbra wiki or from the forums. Lots of the articles are obsolete. The only really good instructions are here, provided by the Zimbra Community Builds project. Currently (3rd Dec 2008) the only other useful articles in the Zimbra wiki are located here

I've filed several bug reports related to CentOS5 build process:

• http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=33588
• http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=33658
• http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=33587
• http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=33659
• http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=33661
• http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=33662

Until these problems are fixed, you will encounter them.

Alternatives to source install

• If ZEULA restrictions are not a concern, use the ZCS "Open Source Edition" binary installer, which is trivial to install
• If you're willing to run Zimbra on Ubuntu or Solaris, get the appropriate packages from Zimbra Community Builds. They might (or might not) work.
• If you require Outlook support, Symbian mobile clients or such, get the trial version for a commercial version of Zimbra.

Getting the source

There are two main places where to get the Zimbra sources:

• Zimbra Community Builds (http://sourceforge.net/projects/zimbracommunity)
• Zimbra's official Perforce repositories

The latest Zimbra code - including the ThirdParty packages - is located in a proprietary Perforce (p4) repository. If you're doing a production build, you should try to download a stable branch. In case you're going to do development, you should probably get HEAD (=development branch). I probably downloaded HEAD at first, as there were numerous stupid errors in the build files that I had to fix.

To can get FRANKLIN (ZCS 5.0.x) from Perforce repositories, you need to get the proprietary Perforce (P4) client from http://www.perforce.com/perforce/downloads/index.html

Once p4 binary is installed, do the following:

$ mkdir -p /home/public/p4
$ export P4EDITOR=nano
$ export P4PORT=codes.zimbra.com:2666

You set the variables in root's $HOME/.bashrc, /etc/profile.d/zimbra.sh or whereever you'd like. That way you don't have to retype them every time you check out the sources. The mkdir is required, because that's where Perforce wants it's stuff to go. It's probably possible to change it's behavior, but hacking around it is faster. After running this command you should have Zimbra sources in /home/public/p4/FRANKLIN/. If you wish to use another directory, you should symlink it to /home/public/p4 to avoid trouble later on. Zimbra's build system assumes some files are located there.

Next download the code. If you want to use the latest code, use this command:

$ p4 -u public -P public1234 -c public-view sync -f //depot/zcs/FRANKLIN/...

You should use specific, tested releases for production systems. To download a release branch, use something like this:

$ p4 -u public -P public1234 -c public-view sync -f //depot/zcs/FRANKLIN-5011/...

If you're not sure which branch or directory to download, you can list the repository contents like this:

$ p4 -u public -P public1234 -c public-view files //depot/zcs/... > /tmp/zimbrarepo
$ less /tmp/zimbrarepo

An alternative to getting sources from Zimbra's Perforce repository is to download the Zimbra Community Build sources located here. Make sure you don't download FRANKLIN-5010.tar.gz as it's full of files with Windows linefeeds which render it useless.

Setting up the build environment

Installing Dag repository

Stock CentOS5 install has only a few basic repositories configured. You should definitely add the Dag repository to your yum repositories. You can get the repository information and instructions from http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/rpmforge-release.

Installing buildtime, runtime and post-install dependencies

NOTE: I've attached complete list of packages installed on my CentOS5.2 build system to this wiki page. When you've installed all those packages, most/all dependencies should be satisfied.

Zimbra's buildtime and runtime dependencies are very poorly documented, hence it's nearly impossible to list them all. Runtime dependencies are checked when you run install.sh in ZimbraBuild/zcs-5.0.10-something.CentOS5.FRANKLIN. They're not an issue when building Zimbra, but you can use the techniques outlined below to fix them. There are also some post-install dependencies that are needed when Zimbra is launched. If some of your Zimbra modules (e.g. amavisd) don't start, check Zimbra's logs to see what dependency is missing, install it and restart Zimbra. You can use zmstatus to check module status easily.

Even though you should install all documented dependencies, they don't get you very far. A typical Zimbra build goes like this:

• try building
• build fails
• check the error message
• find out which package contains the missing dependency
• install the missing dependency
• try building
• etc.

In the troubleshooting section (below) I'll show what to do when a dependency is missing.

Creating CentOS5-specific files and directories

Zimbra does not support building Zimbra on platforms that are not officially supported (see this bug report). This means that to build on CentOS, we need to do some manual work. First create the ThirdPartyBuild directory for CentOS:

root@zimbra: /opt/build.zimbra/source/FRANKLIN> mkdir -p ThirdPartyBuilds/CentOS5

Next create the necessary platform file for CentOS:

root@zimbra: /opt/build.zimbra/source/FRANKLIN/ZimbraBuild/defs> cp RHEL5.def CentOS5.def

Building Zimbra

The Zimbra build process is well described in these two articles:

• http://varlogmessages.vroomvroom.org/documentation/ubuntu-port/ubuntu-build-instructions
• http://varlogmessages.vroomvroom.org/documentation/solaris-port/build-instructions

Use the Solaris instructions only as a reference. According to dijichi, Zimbra Community Builds project manager, the Solaris instructions are more up-to-date. Unlike stated in Solaris instructions you should probably add the environment variables to /etc/profile.d/zimbra.sh instead of /etc/profile directly.

The basic build steps are these:

• Get the source (p4 or Zimbra community builds)
• Set up the build environment
• Build ThirdParty modules (buildThirdParty.sh)
• Build memcached, nginx and tcmalloc in ThirdParty (see the README)
• Create a JDK tgz package and copy it to place (see above)
• Build Zimbra modules (cd ZimbraBuild;make)

The JDK creation is not covered in the above HOWTO's. You can try if your Zimbra sources include the JDK already - mine didn't. To create the JDK, first extract an official Sun JDK to a directory (here /opt). Then create a tgz package from it and copy it to appropriate Zimbra directory:

$ mkdir -p /opt/build.zimbra/source/FRANKLIN/ThirdPartyBuilds/i386/java
$ cd /opt/build.zimbra/source/FRANKLIN/ThirdPartyBuilds/i386/java
$ tar -C /opt -zcf jdk1.5.0_16.tgz jdk1.5.0_16

You probably need to change the Java version in ZimbraBuild/defs/plat_common.def too:

JAVA_VERSION    := 1.5.0_16
JAVA_FILE       := jdk
JAVA_DIR        := java
JAVA_SOURCE     := $(THIRD_PARTY_BUILDS)/i386/$(JAVA_DIR)/$(JAVA_FILE)$(JAVA_VERSION)

Debugging the build process

Build problem categories

You'll most likely encounter lots of errors in the build process. Instead of trying to cover all the cases, which is impossible, I'll outline the debugging process. Causes for Zimbra build problems can be divided into several categories:

• False assumptions about the build system. For example, the build files assume /home/public/... exists.
• Undocumented build-time dependencies (there are lots of these)
• Missing definitions files or directories, in case your OS version is not supported
• Outdated definition files, such as RPM spec files
• Wrong program version numbers or paths in build files
• Version mismatches between the included third party software and OS'es *-devel packages

I've reported bugs on many of these issues (see Introduction).

Fixing missing dependencies

If the error message tells you which software package is missing, you can just guess the package name

$ yum search something
$ yum install something

Most likely you need lots of development packages. They are named something-devel in CentOS. If the build process complains about a single missing file, you can find it by installing yum-utils and then using repoquery to locate the package containing the missing file:

$ yum install yum-utils
$ repoquery -a -f *missing-file

If you get several possible packages, make an educated guess.

Debugging ThirdParty build process

During ThirdParty build process you'll eventually stumble upon missing dependencies. You can use the buildThirdParty.sh script at first (see bugs above). When the first component fails, you should interrupt the build process with CTRL-C, enter the failed component's directory and run the build manually from there. For most components using make is enough, but some use custom build scripts. In that case launch that script instead. Once make has finished and failed, you'll most likely see an error related to a missing header files (something.h). Locate and install the dependency as outlined above. If Zimbra bundle already contains the necessary header file, there's most likely a problem with some Makefile. Next retry building the failed module. If all goes well, you can continue building the next module (and so on).

The correct compile order for Zimbra ThirdParty software can be seen from the ThirdParty/Makefile. In FRANKLIN-5010_2660 community build the correct order is this:

DIRS := openssl \
        mysql \
        sleepycat \
        libxml2 \
        heimdal \
        curl \
        cyrus-sasl \
        openldap \
        aspell \
        clamav \
        apache-httpd \
        php \
        pcre \
        expat \
        popt \
        PostFix \
        dspam \
        rrdtool \
        snmp

You might also run into trouble when ThirdParty build creates files which are not the same name/version as those defined in actual Zimbra build files. In this case make a symbolic link or copy the file over from older/newer Zimbra source tree (if available).

Debugging Zimbra module build

It's highly unlikely that Zimbra build will success on the first try. By default the Zimbra build scripts are pretty stupid, as they remove all that was left in the previous run and recompile everything from start. You can save time using the same build technique as for ThirdParty modules. You just need to follow this build order:

ore
proxy
mta
store
ldap
snmp
logger
apache
spell
zcs_stage

(taken from http://varlogmessages.vroomvroom.org/documentation/solaris-port/build-instructions/build-zimbra-server)

Installing Zimbra

After you've successfully built Zimbra, go to

   $ /opt/build.zimbra/source/FRANKLIN/ZimbraBuild/zcs-something-CentOS5.FRANKLIN
   $ ./install.sh 

That should take care of the Zimbra install. Ignore any complains about the OS version.