First steps using Alfresco - Port mappings/changes

[chri_s]

Hi,

i am a kind of newby to alfresco. i want to configure alfresco within a debian 8.9 subsystem and use alfresco 5.2 community.

Now i want to change Ports from 8080 to 80 or 443 as i want to use it from external with an le cert.

But i didn't understand yet, where i have to trigger configuration to work.

My plans are connection by https ->  (443) alfresco (share) -> ?(seems to be another portdefinitions?)

but: how to implement it the right way?

Maybe you can give me a hint. The how tos i tried until now didn't run.

hope to hear from you to go on soon

Chris

[alxgomz]

Hi Chris,

The right way to do that is really to use a reverse proxy in front of your Alfresco instance.

Apache or Nginx are known to work really well with Alfresco and you will for sure find a lot of documentation on how to do it.

It is also possible to setup tomcat to use non default ports but I wouldn't recommand it though if that's for a "non-test system". But if you want to go down that road you will need to change the tomcat/conf/server.xml file and change ports defined in the "Connector" element (8080=>80 & 8443=>443). One of the Connector will be defined as an https connector. For this one, you'll also need to specify the keystore and truststore to use in order for SSL to work. As a consequence, you'll need to setup the appropriate keystores, either using keytool, or using the default one that are shipped with Alfresco (and of course are not considered secured).

But really setting up a reverse proxy is what I would advice.

In both case, you' then need to edit the alfresco-global.properties files in order to change the properties bellow:

alfresco.host

alfresco.port

alfresco.context

alfresco.protocol

share.host

share.port

share.context

share.protocol

[chri_s]

Hi Alexandre,

thank you for your very helpful post.

Then i want to give it a try using a reverse proxy. Can I use an external one - such like in a Sophos UTM? I am asking because i tried it already starting with https://ecm.tld.net to work fine with the first site. When trying to acess /share and subpanels especially login it doesn't work with ecm.tld.net, 443 and https in alfresco-global.properties (both alfresco and share). May you would give me an idea, how to configure it in this environment to run smooth?

Thank you,

Chris

[alxgomz]

I don't know SOPHOS UTM but if your proxy supports either http, https or ajp to connect to a tomcat backend server then it should work. Of course http and ajp are usually more targeted at local networks. if you use an external proxy you may want to use https instead, and then you're back to the point where you want a tomcat https connector with a proper certificate.

Regarding the issue you talk about... I'm sorry I don't really understand what you mean.

[chri_s]

It supports either http or https and stands in front of the network. Therefore i could access alfresco by http. 

But trying to access leads to either a redirect to ecm.internal:8080 or gives me a login fault, which let me ask how alfresco-global.properties has to be defined in a proper way to solve reverse proxy acess properly.