Getting the 'preview website' to work (alf 3.2 on deb 5.0)

[jonasn]

Hi

We are in the middle of setting up Alfreso. The administration interface
seems to work flawlessly, yet we are unable to use the "preview website"
function.

We tried to follow, as closesly as possible the instrutions provided in
this tutorial, for setting up alfresco with the default tomcat server etc.

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Installing_Labs_3_Stable_on_Debian_Etch
Everything appeared to be in working order, and the admin-interfaces was
available.

The we followed this tutorial to set up a site:
http://www.alfresco.com/products/ecm/enttrial/files/getting_started_with_wcm_for_enterprise3_1.pdf

At the end of this tutorial it was suggested to preview our new site, by
clicking the "preview site" button on this page:
http://<ip adress of server>/alfresco/faces/jsp/browse/browse.jsp

We got directed to
http://alfrescosample.www--sandbox.127-0-0-1.ip.alfrescodemo.net:8180/,
which of course didn't resolve to anything sensible, so we put up a dns
entry. Now when we try to connect to this address, the connection simply
times out, with no informations whatsoever of what the problem could be.

We have tried various theories, but to no avail. There is some
exceptions in the logs that may hint at what's wrong (or they might not,
who knows).

The only part of the log that hints at an error (to us), is:

Sep 22, 2009 1:57:49 PM
org.springframework.remoting.rmi.RmiClientInterceptor
handleRemoteConnectFailure
WARNING: Could not connect to RMI service
[rmi://localhost:50500/authentication] - retrying
java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

from Catalina.log, that appears from time to time. But there may be
other things of relevance, which we are not knowledgeable enough to be
aware of.

The logs are pasted here

http://pastie.org/627252 (alfresco.log)
http://pastie.org/627254 (catalina.out)

We have tried to make a host entry on a local machine, and tried to set a wildcard domain in our dns server as suggested in this document:

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Configuring_the_Virtualization_Server

After that we still get a timeout/stall when trying to access the page.

Specifically we have tried to insert a host page on a local machine with the following entry (192.168.1.222 is the server):

192.168.1.222 alfrescosample.www–sandbox.127-0-0-1.ip.alfrescodemo.net‍

and inserted the following lines in a bind config file

*.ip.localdomain.lan      IN A     192.168.1.222
ip.localdomain.lan         IN A     192.168.1.222  
*.ip.alfrescodemo.net   IN A     192.168.1.222‍‍‍‍

and inserted

alfresco.virtserver.domain=ip.localdomain.lan‍

in

/opt/alfresco/virtual-tomcat/conf/alfresco-virtserver.properties
‍‍

We got no changes after this. Still a stall and eventually a timeout when trying to access:

http://alfrescosample.www--sandbox.127-0-0-1.ip.alfrescodemo.net:8180

I hope that somebody can help. Any suggestions are appreciated.

[janv]

You do not mention whether you actually started the Alfresco Virualization Server (virtual-tomcat) for example by running "virtual_server.sh" in a separate shell ? You will currently need this for OOTB preview (if using the virtualization server approach).

Here are some further references:

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Installing_Labs_3_Stable_on_Debian_Etch#virtual_alf.sh
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Configuring_the_Virtualization_Server#Method_1:.C2.A0.C2.A0Using_ip.al...
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Virtualization_Server_FAQ#What.27s_EchoDNS.3F

Regards,
Jan

[jonasn]

Thanks for the reply. Well. Virtual_alf.sh is started

It starts automatically in ./init.d/alfresco.script and I have started it manually afterwards.

However sometimes it says like this in the alfresco.log when I try to preview the site.

16:38:14,469 WARN  [org.alfresco.web.config.ClientConfigElement] Virtualisation Server not started - reverting to default IP: 127-0-0-1.ip.alfrescodemo.net
16:38:14,470 WARN  [org.alfresco.web.config.ClientConfigElement] Virtualisation Server not started - reverting to default port: 8180

I assumed it was because it wasn't started. If I start it again it just start a new java process but now I see that sometimes it might display the error message in alfresco.log again when I try to preview the site, even though it is started. I can see it is started because there is one more java process after I started it. If I try to stop it I get an error message. I have pasted the error message here: http://pastie.org/627501

Also I assumed that the catalina.out file were a log file specifically for virtual_alf, but maybe it isn't. How do I filter out log messages related to virtual_alf.sh catalina.out?is there a separate logifile for virtual_alf. As earlier written you can see my catalina.out file here:

http://pastie.org/627254

Maybe part of the problem is because I don't understand why the virtual server is necessary. Is this the only way I can see the site I have made. I have also tried to deploy the site. Can I see the deployed site without going through the virtual server?