Ubuntu Linux full or tomcat install?

[pcmonk]

If I install on Ubuntu Server which Ubuntu version should I stick with for a clean install?  Which Alfresco install should I use Full or Tomcat?

[tvaughan77]

I'm on Ubuntu 8.04 and just did the "full install" with Alfresco-Labs-3Stable-Linux-x86-Install yesterday

I found it easier than trying to do just the tomcat install and overlay that install with my previous Alfresco version (labs3c) so I just did a whole new install without too many problems.

Here were my steps, FYI:
1) Run the installer (I stuck it in /opt/alfresco as an install location)

2) Start alfresco, tail the tomcat/logs/catalina.out logs until the webapp is loaded (ignore any/all errors)

3) Stop alfresco  (we started it just to get the webapp exploded)

4) Edit tomcat/webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/repository.properties
4a) Change the dir.root to be "/opt/alfresco/alf_data" (or wherever…just make it a full path)

5) To get mysql setup, I wen under the alfresco/extensions directory and added a custom-hibernate-dialect.properties and a custom-repository.properties file
NOTE - my step #5 may be obsolete since I noticed the new installer puts a bunch of files in tomcat/shared/classes … that seems like a better place for configuration overrides than tomcat/webapps/

6) I made sure there was a mysql connector JAR in tomcat/lib

7) Restarted tomcat and stuff mostly worked…
7a) never got OpenOffice to integrate correctly
7b) had to do a bunch of aptgets and make/builds to get ImageMagick and pdf2swf
7c) had to search on the boards for a fix to a problem with "avm://sitestore has duplicate nodes; ContextFailure" (lemme know if you get that and I can help)

Good luck!

[pcmonk]

So there were things that did not work after the install.  Should the installer have done this or were these optional componets the installer does not install?

[tvaughan77]

Well, by default, Alfresco is going to test the existence of three "helper utils" like OpenOffice, ImageMagick and swf2pdf.  If you don't have those installed and/or they aren't where Alfresco thinks they should be, you'll get what *looks* like nasty errors in the tomcat log on startup.  They don't actually affect anything, but they can look bad.

That said, the alfresco "upgrade path" from existing installations to the latest installation is a f'in nightmare, so they recommend you just backup your old alf_data and database and install the "upgrade" to a brand new location.  Some of the (minor) problems I ran in to yesterday were related to not following that advice and trying to overlay the Labs-3Stable installation on top of my old Labs-3c installation. 

When I realized the folly of my ways and re-started from scratch by just running the full installer, things worked pretty seamlessly.

[mikeh]

That said, the alfresco "upgrade path" from existing installations to the latest installation is a f'in nightmare…

Any specifics you came across that you can feed back?

We don't have "upgrade installers" but usually: shut down, back-up (just in case), replace the .war, clean Tomcat temp and work folders, restart works.

Mike

[tvaughan77]

I'll take better notes next time, but especially going from labs3b, 3c, etc on tomcat5 to labs3d/stable on tomcat6 seemed to not work at all.

I ended up "needing"* to blow away the old installation, drop the table and start from scratch.

* - I'm not sure what I actually needed to do, but that's what I ultimately ended up doing after flailing for hours trying to get the replaced wars to load without a string of stack traces.

[mikeh]

Ok, be interesting to know what the issues were as that's exactly what we do here on our development systems.

Post again if you remember specifics.

Thanks,
Mike