Idisis Blog

The setup and configuration of the ARCHIBUS Web Central application is well documented on the Windows platform. In fact, many who do not want to go through the trouble of setting up its Tomcat web server will usually opt for the self-deploying executable that guides the administrator through the setup of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), Apache Tomcat, and the Web Central application at the command of a single mouse click.

Though the ARCHIBUS application client is ultimately tied to the Windows platform, the web client is based on Java technology and impartial in regards to its Operating Systems (OS) and the browsers that may consume it. Essentially, one may find themselves running their database on a Sun Solaris OS while hosting Web Central on a Mac OS (can’t wait until the release of Snow Leopard!) and serving up the solution to Linux users via the Google Chrome browser.

The following steps will outline an overview for configuring Web Central on a Unix platform which encompasses different flavors such as Linux, Solaris, Irix, Ubuntu and Mac OS.

First, we can no longer deploy Web Central via a Windows executable. If the idea of this causes you to squirm, then just understand that this can be done but leave the how part to your system administrator.

Secondly, we must ensure that JRE and Apache Tomcat are installed as standalones on your system as per documentation of the software. I will mention that close attention must be paid to the environment variables such as [JAVA_HOME]. For example, Solaris demands that the path be set via the command prompt while Mac OS recommends the creation of an environment.plist.

Configuring environment variable JAVA_HOME on Mac (01)

Please note that this can be done on either the root or per user profile. Java path may vary depending on the location chosen for the install of the JRE. Furthermore, OS such as Solaris is case-sensitive even at the folder level.

Configuring environment variable JAVA_HOME on Mac (02)

To ensure that the Web Central files are properly deployed by your Tomcat engine, the archibus.war package must be placed at the following location:

\tomcat\webapps\

Finally, we must configure the Tomcat engine to include a runtime command that ARCHIBUS has embedded within the Windows batch file. For those running Tomcat version 5.x, this configuration file is called catalina.sh. A memory specification must be declared to properly instruct resource allocation for the orderly execution of the application. The example below assumes that the server has 1 GB of memory readily available for the application.

Configuring Catalina.sh

Of course, make sure that your afm-projects.xml and afm-secure.xml are configured based on your project and database settings.

Start up Tomcat in your terminal:

./startup.sh

If for any reason, your Tomcat server and the ARCHIBUS application do not deploy, check the error messages captured in \tomcat\logs\*.logs and \tomcat\webapps\archibus\WEB-INF\config\archibus.log respectively.

Web Central on Sun Solaris

Software used in this setup:

Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.5.0_16

Apache Tomcat 5.5.27

ARCHIBUS Web Central 17.3.3.031

Oracle DB Server 10 R2

Mac OS X 10.5.6

Solaris 10 update 2

Ubuntu 8.10