BitNami Alfresco

How to start/stop the servers?

The Stacks include a graphical tool to manage the servers easily. You can find the "manager-windows.exe", "manager-osx" or "manager-linux" tool in your installation directory. Using this tool, you can Start, Stop or Restart the servers and check the log files. You can click on the icon to start it.

On Windows: You can also start the Manager tool from shortcuts: Start -> Program Files -> BitNami Stack -> Manager tool

If you prefer, you can use the "ctlscript.sh" utility from the command line. This script is in the installation directory.

On OS X: You can start the Manager tool from the installation directory or you can use the "ctlscript.sh" utility from a Terminal.

host:~ user$ cd /Applications/application-version
host:~ user$ ./ctlscript.sh start

On Linux:

$ cd ~/applicaton-version
$ ./ctlscript.sh start

How to create a full backup of Alfresco Stack?

Because BitNami stacks are self-contained, the simplest option for performing your backups is to copy or compress the BitNami Stack installation directory. To do so in a safe manner, you will need to stop all servers, so this method may not be appropriate if you have people accessing the application continously.

On Linux and OS X:

$ cd installdir
$ ./ctlscript.sh stop
$ cp -r installdir application-backup

Or you can create a tarball:

$ tar -czvf application-backup.tar.gz installdir

Or a zip file:

$ zip -r application-backup.zip installdir/*

To restore this backup you only need to uncompress the backup in the same location. It is important to use the same path that was used when the stack was originally installed.

For example if you have a backup in a Red Hat machine, you can copy it to an Ubuntu Linux machine (a different distro!) in the same location. Then start the servers and that’s all.

$ cd installdir
$ ./ctlscript.sh start

You just need to be carefull to keep the same permissions for the files and folders. If you installed as root make sure that in the new machine you copy the files also as root. And this case, if you are also moving MySQL or PostgreSQL, you will need to create those users in the new machine (if they don't exist yet).

On Windows:

On Windows, you should follow the same process. Stop the servers using the shortcuts and copy the whole installation directory. To restore the system, copy the directory to a different Windows machine in the same location and follow these steps from a command prompt:

$ cd installdir
$ serviceinstall.bat INSTALL

You can access your BitNami Application at the usual URL.

If you want to create only a database backup, check the following link for MySQL /Components/MySQL#How_to_create_a_database_backup or for PostgreSQL

How to upgrade Alfresco?

It is strongly recommended that you create a backup before starting the update process. If you have important data, it is advisable that you create and try to restore a backup to ensure that everything works properly.

There are two different ways to upgrade your application.

1. If you want to upgrade the application and all Stack components PHP, Ruby, MySQL, Apache… You can follow the steps described at How to upgrade the full Stack migrating the data?
2. In case you only want to upgrade the application code without modifying any other Stack components,  you should follow the guide which is in the application page itself.

How to enable Google Docs integration with Alfresco?

Since BitNami Alfresco 4.2.c-1 version, you can easily enable Alfresco integration with Google Docs. Before you enable Google Docs integration, set up a Google Docs account that will be used for administrative purposes for the integration between Alfresco and Google Docs.

It is only necessary to edit the "installdir/apache-tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco-global.properties" file and set the following options:

# Enables Goggle Editable functionality set to true to enable
googledocs.googleeditable.enabled=true

# Google Docs system authentication credentials account Alfresco will use a tempt account 
# for everyone
googledocs.username=your_account@gmail.com
googledocs.password=your_gmail_password

# Google docs Application name
googledocs.application.name=Alfresco ECM system

# Google Docs URL
googledocs.url=https://docs.google.com/feeds/default/private/full
googledocs.downloadurl=https://docs.google.com/feeds/download

# Google Docs Spreadsheet Service
googledocs.spreadsheet.service.name=wise
googledocs.spreadsheet.downloadurl=https://spreadsheet.google.com/feeds/download

Then restart the Tomcat server:

$ installdir/ctlscript.sh restart tomcat

Once you have enabled it, create your own site in Alfresco application and open the "Document Library". In the "Create Content" option, you can create a Google Docs document and start to editing it.

If you see an error similar to this:

Error Message: 11260001 Failed to execute script 'classpath*:alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/googledocs/toolbar.get.js': 11260000 Error: Parameter "site" is missing.

Maybe you are trying to create a google docs document in your repository directly. It is necessary to create an Alfresco site and create the Google Document in the "Document Library".

How to install a plugin on Alfresco?

Alfresco have package modules called AMPs which you can install on top of the basic installation.

To install any AMP on top of the BitNami Alfresco, you can follow the same steps that you can see to install Alfresco Records management Module.

• Download alfresco-community-dod5015-3.4.d.zip and extract the files
   
• Move the alfresco-community-dod5015-3.4.d.amp file to the amps directory. There are two directories depending on the AMP is for the "/alfresco" application or for the "/share" application. On Linux and Mac OS X you can execute:
  $ mv *.amp installdir/apps/alfresco/amps
  or
  $ mv *.amp installdir/apps/alfresco/amps_share
  
  You can use "sudo" if you are using the Virtual Machine or the Amazon Cloud Images.
   
• Stop the Apache Tomcat server. You can use the Manager tool or the commands below.
  $ cd installdir
  $ ./ctlscript.sh stop tomcat
   
• Run the apply_amps command, which is in the root Alfresco directory. On Windows execute the apply_amps.bat script. On Unix and Mac OS X you can execute the below.
  $ cd installdir/apps/alfresco
  $ ./apply_amps.sh
  
  

  You can use "sudo" if you are using the Virtual Machine or the Amazon Cloud Images. It is necessary to change the permissions of the new war files: $ sudo chown -R tomcat:tomcat /opt/bitnami/apache-tomcat/webapps

• Start the Apache Tomcat server. You can use the Manager tool or the commands below.
  $ ./ctlscript start tomcat

How to configure the email settings of Alfresco?

To send emails from Alfresco application via SMTP protocol, it is necessary to specify the SMTP settings in the installdir/apache-tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco-global.properties file. The following example shows how to configure Alfresco using a GMail account:

### SMTP Configuration ###

mail.host=smtp.gmail.com                                                                       
mail.port=465                                                                      
mail.protocol=smtps                                                                                       
mail.username=your_account@gmail.com                                                                     
mail.password=your_password                                                                      
mail.encoding=UTF-8                                                                                       
mail.smtps.starttls.enable=true                                                          
mail.smtps.auth=true

Then, restart the Tomcat server:

$ sudo installdir/ctlscript.sh restart tomcat

How to enable CIFS and/or FTP for Alfresco?

To enable CIFS in Alfresco it is necessary to open the 445 port. If you have installed the Native Stack you probably have access to that but if you are using the Virtual Appliance or the AMI it is necessary to open this port.

This guide to know how to open a port in the Virtual Appliances firewall or this guide to open a port in BitNami Cloud Hosting.

The Virtual Machines and AMIs have an internal FTP server installed. You can also enable to access to it. In this case it is necessary to open the 21 port in the firewall and comment the following line in the /etc/vsftpd.conf file:

#listen_address=127.0.0.1

Then you can restart the vsftpd server:

$ sudo service vsftpd restart