Install Alfresco CMS in Red Hat or Debian Linux through Docker.
A step by step guide to install Alfresco CMS in Redhat or Ubuntu through Docker with all the required dependencies.
Introduction:
In my previous blog, I described in detail about how Alfresco is one of the most amazing CMS open-source tools in the market and also described the key features of Alfresco in a very detailed manner but still there are alot of amazing and helpful features that need to be explored if you’re considering to use Alfresco. So why not install Alfresco on your OS for the better understanding of how Alfresco’s architecture works and what features you could use to fulfill your current requirement.
In this blog, I will guide you how to install Alfresco through Docker. Now when I mentioned in the title about installing it on Redhat, its because most of the users initially face alot of dependency issues when installing Alfresco on their redhat server. It happened me too and after a lot of R&D I finally managed to install Alfresco on Redhat.
Required Dependencies for Installation on Redhat:
Compared to Debian Linux, On Redhat you need to manually install some dependencies before installing Alfresco.
If your workplace has some strict security OS rules that you need to get access a URL if you’re trying to download a package, make sure you get access to the following URLs for the installation.
https://hub.docker.com/_/postgres
https://hub.docker.com/r/alfresco/alfresco-share
https://hub.docker.com/r/alfresco/alfresco-content-repository-community
And if you need to get access to run some specific commands in your server, make sure to get access to the following commands.
rpm
yum
find
make
wget
Docker
systemctl restart docker
yum-config-manager
Install Docker:
We’re installing Alfresco through Docker, which means our Alfresco will be running on Docker containers because Docker is alot secure, runs apps in a separate containerized enviornment, user can commit the current changes to a docker image and push that image to Docker Hub. So that means if you’re server crashes you can pull that docker image to another server and run it in that server and you will be able to restore Alfresco’s environment and data easily. You won’t need to install Alfresco again from scratch, your state of the CMS will be restored through docker. So lets install Docker install before moving on to the installation of Alfresco.
For Redhat, install this docker dependency before installing docker.(If you’re using Debian Linux you won’t need this step).
sudo yum install http://mirror.centos.org/centos/7/extras/x86_64/Packages/container-selinux-2.107-3.el7.noarch.rpm
Now Install Docker on RedHat
sudo yum-config-manager — add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo
sudo yum install docker-ce-19.03.0–3.el7
sudo systemctl start docker
Check if docker is running “sudo systemctl status docker”. The status should be shown as active.
To install Docker on Debian
sudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get install \
apt-transport-https \
ca-certificates \
curl \
gnupg \
lsb-releasecurl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpecho \
"deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian \
$(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/nullsudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.iosudo systemctl start docker
Check if docker is running “sudo systemctl status docker”. The status should be shown as active.
Install Alfresco through Docker:
From here the steps would be same on both Debian and Redhat Servers.
Now we will pull Alfresco’s docker images from Docker Hub and run them in their concerned containers.We will be pulling four Alfresco’s docker images from docker and those will be alfresco-content-repository for your repository files in Alfresco, alfresco-search-services for content’s search and retrieval, alfresco-share which is reponsible for all the User Interface changes and integration in Alfresco and a postgres image where our Alfresco’s database will be running since Alfresco uses Postgres as database. These images will be running in their own container, which means we will have four containers running in our server to run Alfresco.
First we will create a network for our Alfresco containers, through which each of our four container will be able to communicate with each other. We will register all our Alfresco containers on this network.
Create a network for alfresco in Docker.
sudo docker network create alf-net
Now we will pull Alfresco images from Docker hub and run them as a container with some mandatory configured values.
sudo docker run — network alf-net — name alf-postgres -p 5432:5432 -e POSTGRES_USER=alfresco -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=alfresco -e POSTGRES_DB=alfresco -d postgres:10.1
docker run — network alf-net — name alf-search -p 8983:8983 -e SOLR_ALFRESCO_HOST=alf-repo -e SOLR_ALFRESCO_PORT=8080 -e SOLR_SOLR_HOST=alf-search -e SOLR_SOLR_PORT=8983 -e SOLR_CREATE_ALFRESCO_DEFAULTS=alfresco,archive -d alfresco/alfresco-search-services:1.1.1
docker run — network alf-net — name alf-repo -p 8080:8080 -e JAVA_OPTS=’-Ddb.driver=org.postgresql.Driver -Ddb.username=alfresco -Ddb.password=alfresco -Ddb.url=jdbc:postgresql://alf-postgres:5432/alfresco -Dsolr.host=alf-search -Dsolr.port=8983 -Dsolr.secureComms=none -Dsolr.base.url=/solr -Dindex.subsystem.name=solr6′ -d alfresco/alfresco-content-repository-community:6.0.5-ea
docker run — network alf-net — name alf-share -p 8081:8080 -e REPO_HOST=alf-repo -eREPO_PORT=8080 -d alfresco/alfresco-share:6.0.a
Now after you pulled all these docker images, there will be four Alfresco docker containers running on your server i-e alf-repo, alf-share, alf-search & alf-postgres.
Now restart all these containers
sudo docker restart alf-repo alf-share alf-search alf-postgres
Now to check all the containers are running
sudo docker ps
You will have an output like this and STATUS of all the containers should be Up.
Since your Share services are running in alf-share container and are running on port 8081, go to your browser and redirect to “http://localhost:8081/share/page”
Remember if you start or restart Alfresco, it will take a minute or two to load Alfresco since it takes some time for Alfresco to start the repo, database, share and search services.
Once all your services start successfully you will be redirected to the login page of Alfresco.
Alfresco’s default Admin username is “admin” and password is “admin” , if you want to change the admin’s password you can change it in Admin user’s setting after you login to Alfresco.
Enter Username as admin and Password as admin then press Enter or Click Sign in, you will be redirected to Administrator’s Dashboard and from there you will be able to start exploring Alfresco and its features.
To stop Alfresco on your server.
sudo docker stop alf-repo alf-share alf-search alf-postgres
To start Alfresco on your server.
sudo docker start alf-repo alf-share alf-search alf-postgres
There you go, this is it for the installation of Alfresco on Redhat & Debian Linux. Remember when you’re installing Alfresco on Debian you just need to start install docker as your first step, installing dependencies before docker is for Redhat users only.