PXF Packaging

PXF consists of 3 groups of artifacts, each developed using a different underlying technology:

• Greenplum extension -- written in C; when built, produces a pxf.so library and configuration files
• PXF Server -- written in Java; when built, produces a pxf.war file, Tomcat server, dependent JAR files, templates and scripts
• Script Cluster Plugin -- written in Go; when built, produces a pxf-cli executable

The PXF build system can create an RPM package on CentOs platform and a DEB package on Ubuntu platform, respectively. PXF compiles against and generates a different package for every major Greenplum version.

For example, pxf-gp5-1.2.3-1.el7.x86_64.rpm represents an RPM package of PXF version 1.2.3 intended to work with Greenplum 5 on Centos / Redhat 7 operating systems.

PXF RPM specification

On Centos platforms PXF product is packaged as an RPM. The specification on how to build the RPM is provided by the pxf-gpX.spec files in this directory. The following key design decisions were made:

• the name of the RPM package is pxf-gpX, where X is the major Greenplum version (e.g. pxf-gp5, pxf-gp6)
• to install a newer RPM package for the same Greenplum major release, a user will have to upgrade the PXF RPM
• the RPM installs PXF server into /usr/local/pxf-gpX directory (e.g. /usr/local/pxf-gp6)
• the RPM is relocatable, a user can specify --prefix option when installing the RPM to install the server into another directory
• the PXF greenplum extension is initially installed by RPM alongside the PXF server and is not initially active
• the PXF greenplum extension is copied into Greenplum install location during pxf init command issued by a user after the install
• the PXF RPM version number follows 3-number semantic versioning and must be provided during the RPM build process
• the PXF RPM release number is usually specified as 1
• example PXF RPM names are : pxf-gp5-1.2.3-1.el6.x86_64.rpm and pxf-gp5-1.2.3-1.el7.x86_64.rpm

PXF RPM build process

To build an RPM, follow these steps:

1. Install the rpm-build package: sudo yum install rpm-build
2. Install Greenplum database
3. Run source $GPHOME/greenplum_path.sh to configure your PATH to be able to find pg_config program
4. Run make clean rpm from the top-level directory to build artifacts and assemble the RPM
5. The RPM will be available in build/rpmbuild/RPMS directory

PXF RPM installation process

To install PXF from an RPM, follow these steps:

1. Build or download PXF RPM for the corresponding major version of Greenplum. The following example will assume that PXF version 1.2.3 will be installed to work with with Greenplum 5.
2. Decide which OS user will own the PXF installation. If PXF is installed alongside Greenplum, the user that owns the PXF installation should either be the same as the one owning the Greenplum installation or have write privilleges to the Greenplum installation directory. This is necessary to be able to register the PXF Greenplum extension with Greenplum.
3. If a previous PXF version has been installed, stop the PXF server.
4. As a superuser, run rpm -Uvh pxf-gp5-1.2.3-1.el7.x86_64.rpm to install the RPM into /usr/local/pxf-gp5
5. As a superuser, run chown gpadmin:gpadmin /usr/local/pxf-gp5 to change ownership of PXF installation to the user gpadmin. Specify a different user other than gpadmin, if desired.

After these steps, the PXF product will be installed and is ready to be configured. If there was a previous installation of PXF for the same major Greenplum version, the files and the runtime directories from the older version will be removed. The PXF configuration directory should remain intact. You will need to have Java installed to run the PXF server.

PXF removal process

To remove the installed PXF package, follow these steps:

1. Stop the PXF server.
2. As a superuser, run rpm -e pxf-gp5 (or rpm -e pxf-gp6). This will remove all files installed by the RPM package and the PXF runtime directories. The PXF configuration directory should remain intact.