Deployment modes

Three deployment modes are available.

Portlet deployment

This deployment is proposed for portal administrators, it deploys esup-helpdesk as a JSR-168 portlet, in order to execute it within a JSR-168 compliant portal (uPortal, Liferay, infoglue, ...).

If you are no portal administrator or you do not know what a portlet is, select a servlet or quick-start deployment.

Servlet deployment

This deployment is proposed for deployers who want to run the application into an existing servlet container (such as Tomcat).

If you do not know what a servlet is or if you do not have a J2EE runtime available, select a quick-start deployment.

Quick-start deployment

This deployment allows esup-helpdesk to run as a stand-alone application (a Tomcat instance is embedded).

It can be used in order to test the application, but some deployers (especially those who d not have J2EE competences) run in production this way; quick-starts are full-featured applications.

Requirements

Installing esup-helpdesk needs a few requirements.

• esup-helpdesk is provided as a zip file that contains all the sources. The sources must be compiled, which needs a Java Development Kit (a Java Runtime Environment is not enough).
• Installation commands and asynchroneous tasks are run using ant.
• esup-helpdesk is configured by default to connect to a MySql database; Hibernate allows the usage of any other database manager (see Configuring the database connection).

Unix requirements

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Java

Any Unix administrator knows how to install a JDK, embedded in most distributions. If not, download from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp.

Ant

If ant is not available as a package (RPM or any), it can be downloaded from http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi  and installed for instance in /usr/local/.

Java/ant environment variables

In order to simplify administration commands and asynchroneous tasks (see Scripts d'administration et tâches asynchrones 03 Administration), deployers may create in the folder /etc/profile.d the following java.sh script (adapt to your own configuration) :

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_05
export ANT_HOME=/usr/local/apache-ant-1.7.0
export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin:$ANT_HOME/bin

Windows requirements

Download

The last release can be downloaded at http://helpdesk.esup-portail.org/current (previous releases are at http://helpdesk.esup-portail.org).

The zip file to download depends on the deployment mode selected:

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Uncompressing the sources

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Uncompress the zip file you have downloaded to your filesystem, for instance in */usr/local/helpdesk/src*. Uncompressing *esup-helpdesk\[-quick-start\]-x-3.y.z-t.zip* creates the folder *usr/local/helpdesk/src/esup-helpdesk\[-quick-start\]-x.y.z*.

Astuce
Successive versions must be installed at the same location on the filesystem in order to ease upgrades.

Deployment properties (build.properties)

At first, edit the configuration file /build.properties to set the properties that tell how the application should be installed.

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Common properties (any deployment)

Whatever the deployment mode selected, property custom.recover.files must be set.

custom.recover.files

Property custom.recover.files is used when upgrading the application to recover the deployer's customizations, for instance:

custom.recover.files= properties/domain/xmlDepartmentSelection.xml

Quick-start deployments

quick-start

Just tell the it is a quick-start deployment this way:

quick-start=true

All the other properties are optional.

Optional properties

Properties tomcat.host, tomcat.port and tomcat.shutdown-port can be used in order to configure the embedded Tomcat (default values below):

#tomcat.port=8080
#tomcat.shutdown-port=8009
#tomcat.host=localhost

Portlet deployments

deploy.type

Tell that it is a portlet deployment:

deploy.type=portlet

deploy.home

Tell where the application will be deployed to be executed by the portal, typically in a webapps folder of an existing portal:

deploy.home=/usr/local/uPortal/webapps/esup-helpdesk

This path should be used by the portal administrator to configure the portlet context. Typically (tomcat/conf/server.xml):

<Host name="localhost"
    appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true"
    autoDeploy="true" xmlValidation="false"
    xmlNamespaceAware="false">
    <Context path="/esup-helpdesk"
	docBase="/usr/local/uPortal/webapps/esup-helpdesk"
	crossContext="true" reloadable="true">
      <Manager pathname="" />
    </Context>
</Host>

Servlet deployments

deploy.type

Tell that it is a servlet deployment:

deploy.type=servlet

deploy.home

Tell where the application will de deployed to be executed by the servlet container, typically in the webapps folder of an existing Tomcat:

deploy.home=/usr/local/tomcat/webapps/esup-helpdesk

This path should be used to configure the servlet context. Typically (tomcat/conf/server.xml):

<Service name="Catalina">
    <Connector 	port="8080"
	maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" maxThreads="150"
	minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
	enableLookups="false" redirectPort="8443"
	acceptCount="100" connectionTimeout="20000"
	disableUploadTimeout="true" emptySessionPath="true" />
    <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="helpdesk.domain.edu">
        <Host name="helpdesk.domain.edu"
    	    appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true"
	    autoDeploy="true" xmlValidation="false"
	    xmlNamespaceAware="false">
	    <Context
		path="" docBase="/usr/local/tomcat/webapps/esup-helpdesk"
		crossContext="true" reloadable="false">
                <Manager pathname=""
		    className="org.apache.catalina.session.StandardManager" />
            </Context>
        </Host>
    </Engine>
</Service>