Installing Lab3 onto an ISP website

[jmcollett]

Hey everyone,
I am wanting to install Alfresco onto a hosted website by Hostgator.  It is a CentOS implementation, but I do not have access to the OS only a file manager and the provided control panel.

Is there anyone out there that can assist with this inquiry please?

Regards, Martin

[mikeh]

I would suggest contacting Hostgator to see if you can install Tomcat on one of their dedicated servers.

Mike

[jmcollett]

Hey Mike,

Thank you for such a quick response, but I am perhaps a little confused.
I am new to Alfresco and have read over the installation documentation, but was not aware that by installing tomcat, that alfresco would simple run!
what I am seeking is a 'LAMP' type installation that can be installed onto a hosted Server that has limited access.
I realise that I can install the full Alfresco System onto my own Server, but this does not suit my purpose. I really want to place it onto my CentOS virtual Server at the Hostgator ISP.
Is there any advise that you can provide?

Cheers, Martin

[mrogers]

It's emminently possible to run on a hosted server.   There were a few users reporting success using godaddy on these forums this week.

But Alfresco is not a LAMP system and does require a little more setup.   That's not to say you can't install it onto a filesystem, you can.  

As Mike says your first step is to see whether you can run Tomcat or some other Java App Server.    (And you would have to do this for a LAMP system anyway.)

[gengstrand]

I am also interested in using Alfresco with my ISP. I currently am with Network Solutions who allows you to upload WAR files which get hosted by Tomcat 6.0.18; however, I don't get access to anything other than my webapp directory. So, there is no alfresco-global.properties file in the tomcat/shared/classes folder for me.

Is there any documentation here that describes how to install Alfresco strictly from uploading a tweaked alfresco WAR file? I suspect that the goodness starts with the WEB-INF classes folder. I guess that I could just hack around in there for a while. It would save me some time if there was already a document on this.

Thanks!

[gengstrand]

I came to the conclusion that you just put an alfresco-global.properties file in the WEB-INF/classes folder and I got farther when I deployed a WAR file set up like this; however, I ran into another problem.

The tomcat log shows that alfresco wants to create all these files with a path that is unrelated to what I specified in the dir.root property. I don't have permissions to create files anywhere on the server.

Please advise.

[mikeh]

It might be a little more useful if you mentioned which files your install is trying to create, and where. Saves us all guessing!

Mike

[gengstrand]

Right! Sorry.

dir.root=/data/16/1/57/153/1546153/user/1664723/htdocs/jserv-app/alfresco

java.io.FileNotFoundException: alfresco.log (Permission denied)

java.io.FileNotFoundException: /data/16/1/57/153/1546153/meta/1664723/jserv/02b137d.netsoljsp.com/temp/org.alfresco.cache.ticketsCache.data (Permission denied)

Caused by: org.alfresco.error.AlfrescoRuntimeException: 11200000 Failed to create temp directory: /data/16/1/57/153/1546153/meta/1664723/jserv/02b137d.netsoljsp.com/temp/Alfresco

[mrogers]

You are going to need permissions to create files on the web server running the alfresco repository.   The major requirement is for the content store but you will also need to make provision for temporary files, the lucene indexes and the log files.     You will also need to ensure that your content store is backed up.   

And while you are at it you should be able to set up the shared class loader and to be able to tune the settings of your web server.   If your ISP can't do this then choose one that can.

If it's just the connection to the internet that you are outsourcing then you could set up some sort proxy that forwards to an instance of Alfresco you host elsewhere.    Alternatively use a hosting company that can support alfresco rather than just a bog standard ISP.   There's a few who can discussed on these forums.

Alternatively you could explore using the database backed content store.    (but you will still have some issues with for example the need for temporary files and the log files.)

[gengstrand]

Thanks for your help. Is there some specific ISPs you recommend? I thought that I saw somewhere around here that GoDaddy was OK. Are we really just talking about a VPS solution?