Chapter 2. Installation

eXo Platform is packaged as a deployable enterprise archive defined by the Java EE specification, and as a configuration directory. In this chapter, you will see the following topics:

The easiest way to install eXo Platform is to use the Tomcat bundle. This is a ready-made package on top of the Tomcat 6 application server. First, you need to download and extract the package named eXo-Platform-tomcat-3.5.x.zip on your server.

eXo Platform leverages the application server on which it is deployed. This means that you only need to start and stop your application with the default commands.

The server is started successfully when you see the following message in your log/console:

INFO: Server startup in 353590 ms

If you receive the message when you try to stop Tomcat as below, you must stop Tomcat by pressing Ctrl+C or by killing with the -9 command. To perform the kill action automatically, you can run stop_eXo.sh -force that is only available on Linux and OS X systems.

Tomcat did not stop in time. The PID file was not removed.

The server has been stopped successfully when you see the following message in your log/console:

INFO: Stopping Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-8080

You can start up eXo Platform by running one of the following built-in startup scripts:

In the normal mode, the start_eXo scripts launch eXo Platform with the following JVM options:

-Xms256m 
-Xmx1024m 
-XX:MaxPermSize=256m 
-Djava.security.auth.login.config=../conf/jaas.conf  
-Dexo.conf.dir.name=gatein/conf 
-Dexo.profiles=default

Details:

-Xms Minimal Heap Size (defaults to 256 MB).
-Xmx Maximal Heap Size (defaults to 1 GB).
-Djava.security.auth.login.config Path to the JAAS security file where the security domains and JAAS authentication modules are declared.
-Dexo.conf.dir.name Path where eXo Platform will start looking at configuration.properties and configuration.xml.
-Dexo.profiles List of comma-separated profiles of eXo Plaform to activate.

In the developer mode, the gatein-dev scripts launch eXo Platform in the developer mode with a few JVM options.

-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8000,server=y,suspend=n 
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote 
-Dorg.exoplatform.container.configuration.debug 
-Dexo.product.developing=true

Details:

-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote Activate the remote JMX monitoring.
-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8000,server=y,suspend=n Enable the remote debugging.
-Dorg.exoplatform.container.configuration.debug The container will log in to the console which the .xml file loads.
-Dexo.product.developing=true Deactivate Javascript and CSS merging for debugging more easily. Next, activate a special language called Magic Locale "ma" showing the property keys instead of the translations.

Now, you can start and run the eXo Platform demo, but you will need to adjust these values for a production setup.

Previously, users got used to changing the gatein.sh file, but this file is no longer used since Platform 3.5.0-CR1. Now, to customize the environment variables, you have to modify the setenv.sh file (setenv.bat file in Windows).

This file is located in:

The following is the content of this file:

LOG_OPTS="-Dorg.apache.commons.logging.Log=org.apache.commons.logging.impl.SimpleLog"
SECURITY_OPTS="-Djava.security.auth.login.config=../conf/jaas.conf"
EXO_OPTS="-Dexo.product.developing=false -Dexo.conf.dir.name=gatein/conf"
IDE_OPTS="-Djavasrc=$JAVA_HOME/src.zip -Djre.lib=$JAVA_HOME/jre/lib"
if [ "$EXO_PROFILES" = "" -o "$EXO_PROFILES" = "-Dexo.profiles=default"] ; then 
EXO_PROFILES="-Dexo.profiles=default"
fi

CATALINA_OPTS="$CATALINA_OPTS $LOG_OPTS $SECURITY_OPTS $EXO_OPTS $IDE_OPTS $EXO_PROFILES"
export CATALINA_OPTS

eXo Platform provides EARs packages to deploy in your existing JBoss application server. They are distributed in the package named eXo-Platform-jboss-3.5.x.zip.

To install eXo Platform on JBoss, follow these steps:

1. Copy the following files to jboss-root/server/default/deploy.

2. Create the folder jboss-root/server/default/conf/gatein and then copy these files to this folder.

3. Copy the file oauthkey.pem to jboss-root/server/default/conf/gatein/gadgets.

4. Configure the JVM parameters.

On Linux, add these lines to the end of jboss-root/bin/run.conf: 

# Platform environment variables
EXO_PROFILES="-Dexo.profiles=default"
EXO_OPTS="-Dexo.product.developing=false -Dexo.conf.dir.name=gatein -Dgatein.data.dir=../gatein"
REMOTE_DEBUG="-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8000,server=y,suspend=n -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote -Dorg.exoplatform.container.configuration.debug"
EXO_XML="-Djavax.xml.stream.XMLOutputFactory=com.sun.xml.stream.ZephyrWriterFactory -Djavax.xml.stream.XMLInputFactory=com.sun.xml.stream.ZephyrParserFactory -Djavax.xml.stream.XMLEventFactory=com.sun.xml.stream.events.ZephyrEventFactory"
JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS $EXO_OPTS $EXO_PROFILES $EXO_XML"

rem # Platform environment variables
set "EXO_PROFILES=-Dexo.profiles=default"
set "EXO_OPTS=-Dexo.product.developing=false -Dexo.conf.dir.name=gatein -Dgatein.data.dir=../gatein"
set "REMOTE_DEBUG=-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8000,server=y,suspend=n -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote -Dorg.exoplatform.container.configuration.debug"
set "EXO_XML=-Djavax.xml.stream.XMLOutputFactory=com.sun.xml.stream.ZephyrWriterFactory -Djavax.xml.stream.XMLInputFactory=com.sun.xml.stream.ZephyrParserFactory -Djavax.xml.stream.XMLEventFactory=com.sun.xml.stream.events.ZephyrEventFactory"
set "JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% %EXO_OPTS% %EXO_PROFILES% %EXO_XML%"

Adapt to your needs:

5. Add the eXo Platform logging categories to jboss-root/server/default/conf/jboss-log4j.xml.




<!-- Limit the JSR170 categories -->

<category name="exo.jcr">

  <priority value="INFO"/>

</category>

<!-- Limit the JSR-168 and JSR-286 categories -->

<category name="org.exoplatform.services">

  <priority value="INFO"/>

</category>

6. Start up the server.

The server is started successfully when you see the following message in your log/console:

INFO [org.jboss.bootstrap.microcontainer.ServerImpl] (main) JBoss (Microcontainer) [5.1.1 (build: ...)] Started in 5m:29s:259ms

7. Shut down the server.

The server has been stopped successfully when you see the following message in your log/console:

INFO  [org.jboss.bootstrap.microcontainer.ServerImpl] (JBoss Shutdown Hook) Shutdown complete

eXo Platform comes with different runtime profiles, enabling you to customize which modules you want to enable/disable in each eXo Platform instance.

When using Tomcat, the start_eXo command accepts a comma-separated list of profiles. When using JBoss, you need to modify the run.conf file (run.conf.bat in Windows), then edit the line containing EXO_PROFILES="-Dexo.profiles=default".

The following profiles are supported:

Profile Description
collaboration Enable the eXo Collaboration module.
knowledge Enable the eXo Knowledge module.
social Enable the eXo Social module.
workflow Enable the Workflow add-ons within the eXo Content module.
webos Enable the eXo WebOS module.

Additionally, you can use these composite profiles:

Profile Description
minimal Contains GateIn + eXo Content.
default Contains all modules except workflow and webos (GateIn, eXo IDE, eXo Collaboration, eXo Social, eXo Knowledge).
all All available modules.

For example: