Deployment Testing

One of the things we’ve improved massively in the forthcoming 2.2 release of Alfresco is the configuration and management of deployment targets. I’ve been playing around with this the last couple of days, using VMware to provide a couple of target hosts for testing.

wcm_configure_deployment.png

The file system deployer is really easy to set up – if you have Java already installed on the system then it’s just a matter of unzipping the deployer package, chmod’ing the shell script and firing it up. This starts a lightweight background Java process which listens via RMI for incoming connections from the authoring server.

I had a couple of issues myself, probably more related to my environment than anything else. Firstly I had to disable IPv6 on the target host, since it was causing the receiver to bind using only this and not using IPv4. Although I could telnet from my main OS and from other VMs onto port 44100, Alfresco was throwing back ConnectionRefusedExceptions, which I assume is some limitation of RMI.

To do this on the Debian VM, I updated the /etc/modprobe.d/aliases file, commenting out the following line:

alias net-pf-10 ipv6

and adding in the following replacement:

alias net-pf-10 off

This solved the first problem, but I then started getting errors indicating that Alfresco couldn’t connect to the host 127.0.1.1, seemingly something to do with the RMI server not picking up the proper IP address for the host. Rather than spend ages fiddling with the network settings, I simply added a -Djava.rmi.server.hostname argument to the command in deploy_start.sh, i.e.

nohup java -server -cp alfresco-deployment.jar:spring-2.0.2.jar:commons-logging-1.0.4.jar:alfresco-core.jar:jug.jar:. -Djava.rmi.server.hostname=192.168.60.130 org.alfresco.deployment.Main application-context.xml >deployment.log 2>&1 &

If your network configuration is sane and you’re not running under VMware you probably won’t need this at all. Obviously if you do then make sure you change your IP address to match that of the host.

Five minutes and three thousand assets later and apparently I had a successful deployment. Not bad.

wcm_monitor_deployment_success.png

The open road

Well done to John and John on the amazing article in the Guardian’s Technology section today. We made it onto page three!

Sadly the online version lacks the pretty pictures in the paper copy on my desk, but it’s a well-written piece, even if it does paint rather a depressing picture of Governmental take-up of open source in the UK.

Job Opportunities

We’re looking for a person to manage Community Relations within Alfresco as well as a Web Manager/Developer to join our growing team. These are two amazingly important roles within the company – and an excellent chance to make your mark on our web presence or the user community that it supports.

More details are in the Jobs section of the web site – drop us a line at careers at alfresco.com if you’re interested.

We’re Hiring!

Today we posted the details of two new openings that we have at Alfresco up on the web site. We’re looking for a web manager to take over my current role managing the main site and associated infrastructure, and other person to look after our various internal systems. Both great opportunities, but admittedly I’m kinda biased there.

If you’re interested, send us a copy of your CV and a short blurb to careers at alfresco dot com.

We're Hiring!

Today we posted the details of two new openings that we have at Alfresco up on the web site. We’re looking for a web manager to take over my current role managing the main site and associated infrastructure, and other person to look after our various internal systems. Both great opportunities, but admittedly I’m kinda biased there.
If you’re interested, send us a copy of your CV and a short blurb to careers at alfresco dot com.