Stipulations for deployment

[mikool74321]

Hey there, my goal is to install alfresco with wcm and eventually be able to easily push content from alfresco to the proper servers. I have alfresco, the wcm extension, and the deployer all working and installed correctly but the problem is that the interface between alfresco and the deployer is far from forgiving. For me to launch the web ap I have to delete the metadata and pray that it works. I want alfresco to be able to push out websites seamlessly and to be able revise and edit websites on the fly. Currently I am trying to push out a simple hello world application and if Alfresco can't do that right how can I expect to use it for my company? So really, what requirements are there for the site to launch? does it have to be reversioned and have the metadata dissapeer.

Thank You
MF

[pmonks]

Why are you deleting the FSR's metadata directory?  That will interfere with the FSR's behaviour and while it shouldn't destabilise deployment per se, it will result in excessive deployment times (since the FSR will consider itself out-of-sync and will request a full resync every time deployment is initiated in the authoring environment).

Cheers,
Peter

[mikool74321]

When I deploy my website it rarely goes through to the directory specified in the application context.xml. I find that it needs a revision or removal of the metadata for  alfresco to recognize that it actually needs to redeploy the site. However, it does work some of the time and I'm sure with some playing around I can get what I want.

I feel that there may be a larger problem in the title of my webapp. Every application sent by alfresco and received by the FSR is put into a file called 'ROOT'. The problem being there is already a ROOT file in my /tomcat/webapps/ directory. Do you change the name in the section called Default Webapp:? For me, this section is greyed out. If I want to deploy multiple websites they can't all be put in a folders with the same name.

Any knowledge on either of these topics would be greatly appreciated.
Thank You
MF

[pmonks]

Regarding deployment, can you provide more specifics on the problem that you're experiencing?  I'm still not clear on the difference between what you're expecting to happen vs what's actually happening.

Regarding directory naming, Alfresco supports multiple "Webapp Folders" per Web Project, but the default just happens to be called "ROOT" (for want of a better alternative, Alfresco follows Tomcat's lead).  You can create other Webapp Folders with whatever names you like by:

1. Logging in as an admin


2. Navigating to your Web Project


3. Selecting "Actions > Create Webapp Folder"


4. Follow the prompts

The name you specify in there will be used in place of the "ROOT" folder at deployment time.

If that's too much work, you can also configure the FSR to deploy your Web Project's content somewhere outside of Tomcat's webapps folder then configure Tomcat to "mount" that directory as a webapp.  This is described at http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/config/context.html - take a look at the "docBase" parameter.

Cheers,
Peter

[mikool74321]

I am running alfresco 2.1.0 with the tomcat bundle and of course the wcm 2.1.0 extension. I'll describe exactly what I am doing and where the problem lies.

1.  I start the Alfresco web app, the visualization server,  and the FSR.  I am doing this all on the same box for testing purposes.

2. I created a new web project and followed all of the prompts and now no longer have a problem with switching the Default Webapp from ROOT.

3. I can deploy the website into the specified directory, which I currently have set to: /opt/www
The site gets deployed without a problem.

4. Things go wrong when I try to deploy a new web project. The Alfresco web app tells me it deployed successfully, but when I try to view the directory on the file system (/opt/www/newsite) the new site is not there.  In fact, the /opt/www directory is now empty.  It removed the first site I created successfully in step 2.

5.  If I stop the FSR, delete the depmeta directory, and restart it, and then try to deploy the new site from the Alfresco web app, it will deploy to /opt/www.

BTW - the os is Ubuntu Linux 8.04.

What's going wrong?

Thank you,
MF

[pmonks]

Ah I see the problem now.  In 2.1.x, FSRs can basically only be deployed to from a single Web Project, due to a silly limitation in the Web Project Settings wizard UI (an issue that has since been addressed).

Some alternatives:

1. Upgrade to 2.2.0, where this has been fixed


2. Install a separate FSR per Web Project


3. Bypass the UI and use the APIs for deployment (this limitation doesn't exist at the API level or in the FSR itself)

For the 3rd option you might find the wcm-deployment project on the forge (http://forge.alfresco.com/projects/wcm-deployment/) a good source of inspiration.

Cheers,
Peter

[mikool74321]

Thank you very much for your advice! I will have to revisit this issue once I get alfresco running on JBOSS

[ftoth]

Hi,

Given recent discussions on Alfresco's release policy, I should point
out that the issues with 2.1 being discussed here are (or could be) referring to the community release.

However, as far as I know, there is no community release beyond 2.1, so addressing
this simple fix (and many others) requires either an upgrade to enterprise, or a switch to "labs beta".

Thanks,

Fred

[pmonks]

Just to clarify, there have been two major releases since Community v2.1 - Community v2.9 (of which there were 2 or 3 minor releases) and Labs v3 (released just 2 weeks ago).

Cheers,
Peter