Alfresco on WSO2 Stratos Application Server(1.5.1)

Bit about products and terms

Alfresco is the open source alternative for Enterprise Content Management (ECM), providing Document Management, Collaboration, Records Management, Knowledge Management, Web Content Management, and Imaging. If you need more information on alfresco go to to their home page by clicking this link.


WSO2 Stratos is the most complete, enterprise-grade, open PaaS, with support for more core services than any other available PaaS today.Developers can simply click to add users and services, develop new applications, and manage their own setup. New services automatically participate in and benefit from governance policies already in place. In addition, new service versions can be deployed and tested side-by-side with versions in production, allowing traffic to be carefully diverted to newer versions
http://wso2.com/cloud/stratos/

With WSO2 Stratos Application Server you can serve both sets of users and easily share logic, management, monitoring, and more. The WSO2 Stratos Application Server brings together the best of breed in open source technologies for Web Applications with Apache Tomcat, and Web Services with Apache Axis2.The WSO2 Application Server, supporting the development, deployment, and management of Web Services and Web applications, delivered as a multi-tenant, elastically scaling, metered platform.

To try ApplicationServer in cloud environment fell free  to visit this link

How to edit war file

We can deploy alfresco on WSO2 ApplicationServer4.1.0 and Stratos Application server1.5.1 both. In my previous post i have described how to deploy alfresco on WSO2 Application Server. Here i will explain additional details to deploy it on stratos. Here in this example we will see how to deploy alfresco on local stratos setup and later we will see how we can do it on stratosLive. First we have to create alfresco-wso2.war file by following the guidelines provided. Those steps are same for this deployment as well.please refer that post regarding those instructions here i will briefly list out them.
01. First unpack war file
02. Then we have to remove Catalina jar file
03. add mysql connector jar to the lib folder(alfresco/alfresco/WEB-INF/lib)
04. Add database configuration entries to alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/repository.properties

Database creation

How to use WSO2 Stratos Data Services Server(DSS) for database

When we use stratos application server for databases we can use WSO2 Data Services Server for manage databases. It provides simplified user interface for users.
The WSO2 Data Services Server, a platform for hosting of data services, with service hosting, service testing, and message tracing features is delivered as a multi-tenant, elastically scaling, metered platform. Data as a Service exposes the data stored in a database. Database level operations can be done using the interface provided by Data as a Service.We will see how to create database using StratosLive DSS

First goto data base and create database

Then you will see database name and database url in user interface. Next goto manage

Then create privileged group.
Next add user and set privilage group. Now we have all necessary propertites for database connection.

Now we can use those permissions to database connection.See the following configurations

# Database configuration
db.schema.update=true
db.driver=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
db.name=alfresco_sanjeewa_info
db.url=jdbc:mysql://rss4.crik244zrfxc.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com/alfresco_sanjeewa_info
db.username=sanj_92jp9Pdo
db.password=mypassword
db.pool.initial=10
db.pool.max=20

Deploy on Stratos

Now we have fix few issues due to security related restrictions on stratos.  Though you can deploy above created war file on Application server you canot deploy it on stratos application server due to security constrains. you will see some error messages if you try to do it.For this problem we have 2 solutions.

01. Then you jave to sign those jar files with server security key file. Use following command to do it.

wso2stratos-as-1.5.1$ jarsigner -keystore repository/resources/security/wso2carbon.jks -storepass wso2carbon location_of_jarfile  wso2carbon

02. We can disable security from Stratos Application server by removing following 2 entries from wso2server.sh file located at wso2stratos-as-1.5.1/bin folder.

#    -Djava.security.manager=java.lang.SecurityManager \
#    -Djava.security.policy=$CARBON_HOME/repository/conf/sec.policy \

Now we can deploy war file without having any issues.Go to webservices refresh window. then you will see Alsresco service. see following figures.

Why tenants cant deploy it on stratosLive.

Alfresco uses wso2stratos-as-1.5.1/alf_data for keep alfresco related data. Each alfresco deployment we need seperate folder.If one tenant deploy it next tenat will not be able to deploy it because that olso tries to access same folder and database. according to stratos design multiple tenats can deploy same war file without having any issues. but when this comes to alfresco installation it fails due to the way alfresco deploy on server. By its design we can run only one alfresco instance on one tomcat server.So the best way to deploy alfresco on public stratos deployment is first super tenat deploy it on Applicationserver and allow other users(Tenants) to use it. 

How to install alfresco on WSO2 Appserver 4.1.0

Alfresco is the open source alternative for Enterprise Content Management (ECM), providing Document Management, Collaboration, Records Management, Knowledge Management, Web Content Management, and Imaging. If you need more information on alfresco go to to their home page by clicking this link.
With WSO2 Application Server you can serve both sets of users and easily share logic, management, monitoring, and more. The WSO2 Application Server brings together the best of breed in open source technologies for Web Applications with Apache Tomcat, and Web Services with Apache Axis2. If you wish to aware more about WSO2 Application server go to here
We need WSO2 Application server to use as application server
you can download it from following url
http://wso2.org/downloads/appserver/
Then we need alfresco war file. you can download it by clicking on Alfresco war file or you can download alfresco file archive from their web site
Then we have to modify Alfresco War file in order to use it on WSO2 Application server. Alfresco war file has designed to use with tomcat sever. WSO2 Appserver has inbuilt tomcat server.we have to do few modifications to alfresco war file before host on Appserver.We will see those steps in detail now.
First unpack war file then you will see following three

.
|—css
|--images
|--index.jsp
|--jsp
|--META-INF
|--scripts
|--services
|--WEB-INF
|—wsdl

Then we have to remove Catalina jar file from the that war file.Go to alfresco/alfresco/WEB-INF/lib inside lib folder you will see Catalina jar. Then delete it.

META-INF.
        |—classes
        |--lib
        |—licenses

Database configuration change
Now we have to do Database configurations for war file.First we need mysql jar file(mysql-connector-java-5.0.8-bin.jar). Download mysql jar file from here.
Next we have to add it to the lib folder(alfesco/alfresco/WEB-INF/lib) inside extracted war file
Then we have to tell alfresco specifically what is our DB Connector.To do that we have to edit file located at alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/.
Add the following entry to the line 73 of repository.properties file which is located at alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/repository.properties
db.driver=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
So we have configured Data Source successfully.
see the following entries at alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/repository.properties

# Database configuration
db.schema.update=true
db.driver=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
db.name=alfresco
db.url=jdbc:mysql:///${db.name}
db.username=alfresco
db.password=alfresco
db.pool.initial=10
db.pool.max=20

How to avoid BindException: Permission denied
The SMB/CIFS server uses ports 137, 138 and 139, the FTP server defaults to using port 21. All of these ports are in the privileged socket range, so if you use these directly you will be required to run Appserver from a privileged account. You can run SMB/CIFS on non privileged ports on Unix provided you redirect privileged ports to the unprivileged ones.
Firstly ensure alfresco is using unprivileged ports:
    Edit /alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/file-servers.xml
    and uncomment

<tcpipSMB port="1445" platforms="linux,solaris,macosx"/>
<netBIOSSMB sessionPort="1139" namePort="1137" datagramPort="1138" platforms="linux,solaris,macosx"/>

Now we have fix all the issues in war file. so now we have to re create war file from the extracted folder. select all folders inside extracted folder and encode as jar file and rename it as alfresco-wso2.war. So now we can deploy this war file directly on WSO2 Application server.Copy war file in to /wso2as-4.1.0/repository/deployment/server/webapps or upload it using GUI. see the following figures.

Figure: From this window you will be able to upload war file

Figure: You will see deployed war files after refreshing UI

Figure : After clicking on deployed alfresco application you will see above window

Setting up database
Now we have to create databse for alfresco.To create database you have to follow next few steps   
mysql -u root -p < ./extras/databases/mysql/db_setup.sql  or type                                                   mysql> create database alfresco default character set utf8;
mysql> create user alfresco identified by 'alfresco';
mysql> grant all on alfresco.* to 'alfresco'@'localhost' identified by 'alfresco' with grant option;
mysql> grant all on alfresco.* to 'alfresco'@'localhost.localdomain' identified by 'alfresco' with grant option;
Now type show databases; and you will see following database structure
+------------------------------+
| Database                       |
+------------------------------+
| information_schema       |
| alfresco                         |
| mysql                            |
| test                               |
+------------------------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)
Setting memory usage of Appserver
Before we can start deploying Alfresco, make sure your server installation has a configured heap size of at least 256 MB. By default, Tomcat is started with the default heap size of your JVM. Usually, with these default settings the deployment of Alfresco will fail. Set following parameter at wso2server.sh file which is available at #wso2as-4.1.0/bin

export JAVA_OPTS='-Xms128m -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m -server'

  
Once you finished database creation you  will be able to deploy alfresco properly. run wso2server.sh and deploy war file and try the service.
Fixing minor issue after deployment
If you get following error we have to clear /wso2as-4.1.0/alf_data folder and we have to re create database

[2011-09-08 09:28:46,932] ERROR {org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader} -  Context initialization failed
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'dictionaryRepositoryBootstrap' defined in class path resource [alfresco/core-services-context.xml]: Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is org.alfresco.error.AlfrescoRuntimeException: Failure during rollback: org.alfresco.repo.dictionary.DictionaryRepositoryBootstrap$1@354742ee
Caused by:
org.alfresco.error.AlfrescoRuntimeException: Failure during rollback: org.alfresco.repo.dictionary.DictionaryRepositoryBootstrap$1@354742ee
    at org.alfresco.repo.transaction.RetryingTransactionHelper.doInTransaction(RetryingTransactionHelper.java:281)

To fix the above issue
Delete all the contents inside /wso2as-4.1.0/alf_data
Go to mysql trminal and type
mysql> drop database alfresco;
mysql> create database alfresco default character set utf8;
Then restart Application server. Then you will see deployed service if you have any problems or issues please ask i will reply you soon.