Alfresco Ubuntu Installer

This install script and guide was created by Peter Löfgren, Loftux AB.

Please visit https://loftux.com (English) https://loftux.se (Swedish) for more information.

Current version : Alfresco Community 6.1 (6.1.1 Repository,6.1.0 Share) or LXCommunity ECM LX101
Ubuntu Version : 16.04 or later.

Alfresco script based install for Ubuntu servers.

This script will help you set up an Alfresco server instance with all necessary third party components. Some will be installed via Ubuntu packages, some directly downloaded. The script will walk you through the process. In the end, there will be some manual tasks to complete the installation.

Alfresco does have installers for Linux, and you may be better off with using those installers if you just want to do a quick test install.

If you intend to run Alfresco in production, this script can help you both with the install. By examining what the script does, you can also learn what components are involved running an Alfresco instance. This is a must for any Alfresco administrator who runs Alfresco in production.

For commercial support with your installation, upgrades and running a production server, contact Loftux AB (Worldwide).

Installing

To start the install, in Ubuntu terminal run;

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/loftuxab/alfresco-ubuntu-install/master/alfinstall.sh  
chmod u+x alfinstall.sh
./alfinstall.sh

All install options will be presented with an introduction. They default to 'y' (yes), so type n to skip install of that component. You need sudo access to install.

Please read all of this README before you go ahead.

There is also lots of documentation at http://docs.alfresco.com/5.1. To get started to become an Alfresco server Administrator, read and make yourself familiar with the 'Administering' section.

Notes

Only 64-bit Ubuntu is supported. Java cannot address enough memory to support running Alfresco on a 32-bit system.
Many components have their download urls pointed to specific version. Whenever a new version comes out, the older version is removed from the download server and this script breaks. These will be updated as soon as they are made known. This is known to happen with LibreOffice and Tomcat. The script will check if the needed components are available and break if they are not.

More on the components/installation steps.

Once the script is downloaded you can modify (if necessary) it to fit your purpose.

LXCommunity ECM

You will be asked to select if you want to install LXCommunity ECM or Alfresco Community.

LXCommunity ECM is a custom build of Alfresco with additional fixes and enhancements and for which you can optionally buy support. You can find more information on this offering at https://loftux.com/alfresco. You can switch between Alfresco Community or LXCommunity ECM as long as they are based on the same schema, see version overview.

Alfresco User

The Alfresco user is the server account used to run tomcat. You should never run tomcat as root, so if you do not already have the alfresco (default in the install script) user, you should add the alfresco user.

In this part of the install is also an update to make sure a specific locale is supported (default sv_SE.utf8). This is useful for LibreOffice date formatting to work correctly during transformations.

Limits

Ubuntu default for number of allowed open files in the file system is too low for alfresco use and tomcat may because of this stop with the error "too many open files". You should update this value if you have not done so.

Starting/Stopping Alfresco and Search Services

Tomcat is the java application server used to actually run Alfresco. The script downloads the latest version of Tomcat 8, and then updates its configuration files to better support running Alfresco.

Ubuntu systemd is used to stop and start tomcat. You must have a look and verify settings;
/opt/alfresco/alfresco-service.sh

Edit locale setting (LC_ALL) and the memory settings in this file to match your server.

About memory, it has default max set to 2G. That is good enough if you have about 5 users. So add more ram (and then some) to your server, update then Xmx setting in alfresco.conf. Your Alfresco instance will run much smoother.

You will be presented with the option to add either MySql or Postgresql jdbc libraries. You should probably add at least one of them.

Once the install is complete (the entire script and the manual steps following that), to start run
sudo /opt/alfresco/alfresco-service.sh start (16.04) - this is a wrapper, using sudo systemctl start alfresco.service will have the same result.
It also starts/stops Alfresco Search Services, it can be started separately with sudo systemctl start alfresco-search.service.

To stop Tomcat for Alfresco, just switch start to stop in the above command. Using status as a parameter will show status of the Alfresco Tomcat service

Nginx

It is sometimes useful to have a front-end for your Tomcat Alfresco instance. Since Tomcat runs default on port 8080, you can use Nginx as proxy. It is also a lot easier to add ssl support. The default config includes sample configuration for this. Share resource files (anything loaded from /share/res/) is cached in nginx, so it doesn't need to be fetched from tomcat.

The script will use the latest version of the Ubuntu package from Nginx instead of default Ubuntu nginx packages. This allows for http/2 support.

The default config file is found in folder /etc/nginx/conf.d/alfresco.conf. If you want to use ssl, you can replace this file with the sample config in alfresco.conf.ssl. Common settings is found in file basic-settings.conf.

Caveat: The upload progress bar in Share will show the upload as complete when the upload from client to nginx is complete, but the upload from nginx to Tomcat Share/Alfresco continues shortly. Usually this is barely noticeable, since server connections speeds are a lot faster than client server connections.

Maintenance message support

If you are using Nginx as front-end there is a built in fallback to a maintenance page when the Alfresco tomcat instance is stopped. Nginx will detect that tomcat is not responding and show this page. It will display expected downtime and a progress bar.

To set the downtime (in minutes) and a custom message, call the ams.sh script found in script folder. ams.sh 20 "Custom message displayed in page"

The above example will set the downtime to 20 minutes (from when you shut down) and with a custom message. If called without parameters it defaults to 10 minutes. Custom message is optional, but if used you also must set the timeout.

The script will shut down Alfresco tomcat instance. To start it you must call sudo /opt/alfresco/alfresco-service.sh start.

The maintenance.html page is found in its default location /opt/alfresco/www and can be customized to your needs.

If you want to implement this support and already have run the alfinstall.sh script, compare your nginx.conf to what is currently in git/master.

Java JDK

Download and install of Oracle Java 8.

If you choose to use any other Java JDK, adjust paths setting in /etc/init/alfresco.conf.

LibreOffice

Downloads and install LibreOffice from libreoffice.org (technically from a mirror). Alfresco just use LibreOffice for transformations, and later versions have better (hopefully) conversion filters.

In this step ImageMagick is also installed from Ubuntu standard packages, if you skip this step install ImageMagick separately. Some extra font packages like Microsoft true type fonts is also installed, since you likely will add documents to Alfresco that have used them, this will result in better transformations.

ImageMagick

Installed using the Ubuntu default package.

If you get the error no decode delegate for this image format on start in the alfresco.log make sure to check that the path for img.coders= in alfresco-global.properties. The path may be version specific for the installed version.

Alfresco

Download and install of Alfresco itself. Or rather, the alfresco.war and share.war and adds them to tomcat/webapps folder.

You also have the option to install Google Docs and Sharepoint addons. Skip if you do not intend to use them, you can always add then later. You can completely skip this step if you intend to use Enterprise version or any other version. See also the special section about the addons directory.

Solr

Install Solr as indexing engine. Solr runs as a separate application and is slightly more complex to configure. It is recommended that you install Solr. Solr can run on a separate server, you can use this script to install the core for what is needed for that. Refer to the official Alfresco documention for the configuration settings for such a setup.

Addons - Manage amps and war files.

A special directory is created, /opt/alfresco/addons. This directory can be used to manage any addons and the core war files.

addons/alfresco - Alfresco amp files.
addons/share - Share amp files.
addons/war - alfresco.war and share.war files goes in here.
The script addons/apply.shis what you run to install amp files to war files, and then copy the war files to tomcat/webapps. The script has three parameter options
amp - just install the amp files to war files.
copy - Copy war files to tomcat/webapps.
all - Do both of the above. You can only do this if tomcat is not running.

If you didn't install Alfresco war files with the install script you can use this script to manage your war files. If you for example want to use the Enterprise version, download the war files from Alfresco support portal and add them to the /war directory and the run apply.sh. Or you can always add them directly to tomcat/webapps.

Scripts - Supporting scripts

In the directory /opt/alfresco/scripts there are some useful scripts installed. Or if you did not run the install script, grab them from github. Here is what they do:

libreoffice.sh - Start/stop libreoffice manually. Sometimes libreoffice crashes during a transformation, use this script to start it again. Alfresco will re-connect when the server detects libreoffice is running. You can add this to crontab for automatic checks:
NO LONGER NEEDED: Since version 6 or LX101, Alfresco uses JodConverter with built in process management.

*/10 * * * * /opt/alfresco/scripts/libreoffice.sh start 2>&1 >> /opt/alfresco/logs/office.log
0 2 * * * /opt/alfresco/scripts/libreoffice.sh restart 2>&1 > /opt/alfresco/logs/office.log

This will make sure libreoffice is running (if not already started and tomcat is running). Once per night it will also do a complete restart (in case LibreOffice behaves badly).

iptables.sh - Script to add port forwarding. Useful if you want to use cifs, ftp that will not run on lower port numbers if not root. Or if you´re not using nginx as front end and want to forward port 80 to 8080.
limitconvert.sh - Script to limit the number of cpu:s ImageMagick convert can use during transformations. Some Document library views with large thumbnails can cause intensive transformation load, and this script make sure some resources are left for other work.
createssl.sh - Create self signed certificates, useful for testing purposes. Works well with nginx.
mariadb.sh - Install the mariadb database server (the MySql alternative). It is recommended that you instead use a dedicated database server. Seriously, do that. And do some database optimizations, out of scope for this install guide.
mysql.sh - Install the mysql database server (the original MySql). It is recommended that you instead use a dedicated database server. Seriously, do that. And do some database optimizations, out of scope for this install guide.
postgresql.sh - Same as for MariaDB, but the postgres version.
ams.sh - To do a maintenance shutdown. For more, see section under nginx.

Alfresco BART - Backup and Recovery Tool

Alfresco BART is a third party tool to aid with your Backup and Recovery requirements.

You can do the basic install using this script, but it is highly recommended that you visit https://github.com/toniblyx/alfresco-backup-and-recovery-tool/ page to learn more on how to configure this tool.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Can this script be used for any version of Alfresco?

Yes, see the Addon section. But do know that it uses latest version of many components, and they may not be Alfresco officially supported stack.

Can I modify the scripts?

Yes, you can either download the install script and modify as needed. Or you clone the entire thing at Github and create your own version. If you create/change anything that you think may be useful, please contribute back.

Upgrading - Can I use this to upgrade an existing install?

At this time, this is not the intended use. So short answer is no.

Longer answer is, you can probably grab pieces of the script to upgrade individual components. Or as is recommended when upgrading, test your upgrade on a separate server. So install a new server with fresh install, then grab a copy of your data and do a test upgrade. If this works, switch to this server. Did you make a backup of your data first?

I want Alfresco and Share on separate server, can this script be used?

Yes (and is also recommended for best performance), but all components are not needed on both servers. The Alfresco server probably doesn't need nginx, the Share server doesn't need LibreOffice, ImageMagick, Swftools and Solr. The 'Alfresco' install step will download both alfresco.war and share.war if run, just remove the one that doesn't apply from tomcat/webapps and addons/war directory.

The script does not use version x of component z, can you fix this?

Probably, but you can also. Just edit the script with the version you want to use, most of the specific links can be found in the beginning of the script.

Why does the script use the latest versions/not use Ubuntu packages?

This combination of packages/downloaded install has been found to work well. But that may not hold true always. If you feel more confident to run a specific version of a component, or want to use a standard Ubuntu package, modify the script. Or skip that part in the install script, and just use this script as an install guide on what needs to be in place for a production server.

License

Copyright 2013-2018 Loftux AB, Peter Löfgren
Distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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