Installing BellaDati on Tomcat

Before You Begin

Please read the following important notes before you begin installing BellaDati on Tomcat:

• Make sure you have the right version of Java. See Installing Java for more details.
• Deploying multiple BellaDati WAR application in a single Tomcat container is not supported. We do not test this configuration and updating any of the applications (even for point releases) is likely to break it.
• We recommend not deploying any other applications in the same Tomcat container that runs BellaDati, especially if these other applications have large memory requirements or require additional libraries in Tomcat's lib sub-directory. Multiple applications in a container can impact stability as a crash in one application could make the entire container inaccessible. Additionally, in order to update or reconfigure any of the applications, you'll need to restart the whole container.

1. Setup data warehouse

Please follow the instructions on the Setting up the PostgreSQL Database page.

2. Download and extract BellaDati WAR Archive

Download the BellaDati WAR distribution as a ZIP archive from the BellaDati download page and extract its content using a tool such as 7-Zip for Windows or Linux's GNU tar tools. Only one of the files in the ZIP archive is used for this setup - belladati.war.

 Avoid using Windows' built-in file extraction tool! This tool silently fails to extract files with long names. Other users have also reported problems with WinRAR.

 Avoid using Solaris' default tar utility! Please use GNU tar on this operating system to extract BellaDati, as GNU tar handles long file names better.

3. Configure BellaDati WAR

Since version 2.7.14 there is no special configuration change needed, however, there are several advanced settings (e.g. enforcing the SSL), which are configurable in application.properties only.

4. Configure Tomcat

4.1 Configure Tomcat Context

A BellaDati context needs to be set up in Tomcat. To do this:

1. Create the directory structure conf/Catalina/localhost/ within your Tomcat installation directory if it doesn't already exist.

2. Create the belladati.xml file and copy it to conf/Catalina/localhost subdirectory of your Tomcat installation directory (created in the previous step).

   <Context docBase="path/to/belladati.war" debug="0" useHttpOnly="true">
     <Parameter name="tapestry.context-path" value="/belladati" override="false"/>
   </Context>
   

3. Update the docBase attribute in the first line to match your system configuration.

If you are installing in Windows, make sure that the paths you specify for the location of the WAR file and database are full paths with drive letters (e.g. C:\path\to\belladati.war).

1. Add following Java System Properties to JAVA_OPTS existing parameters. If added, these parameters will overwrite default application.properties within belladati.war

2. Java System Properties to add to JAVA_OPTS are:

   Property with value	Note
   -Djdbc.password=password	password to belladati_db in Postgres.For production use your own values.
   -Djdbc.username=belladati_dbuser	username to belladati_db in Postgres.For production use your own values.
   -Djdbc.url=jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/belladati_db	You need use your own values for production.

4.2 Set JAVA Environment

4.2.1 For Linux/Solaris

Before you start Tomcat, make sure you have configured the JAVA_HOME variable, which points to the installed Java SDK. You can do it in this way:

$ export JAVA_HOME=/path/to/jdk

Make sure this variable is automatically set after system starts (append it to the .profile).

You can also specify it in the file $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/setenv.sh file (or create this file if it does not exist):

JAVA_HOME="/path/to/jdk"

4.2.2 For Windows

Windows users can specify the environment parameters in the Environment Variables window.

4.3 Set Tomcat Home Directory Permissions

By default BellaDati is creating several directories within the Tomcat home folder. To allow this, Tomcat needs to run as a user with read and write access to this directory.

4.4 Configure Memory Settings in Tomcat

Tomcat memory settings need to be modified to avoid the following issue:

• BellaDati requires more memory than what Tomcat provides by default. This may lead to OutOfMemory errors when running BellaDati if these memory settings are not increased.

To prevent this issue, follow the instructions below.

For Linux/Solaris

Edit $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/setenv.sh file (or create this file if it does not exist) and add the following:

export CATALINA_OPTS="$CATALINA_OPTS -Dmail.mime.decodeparameters=true -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -XX:+UseG1GC -Xms1024m -Xmx2048m"

Alternatively, you can edit the $TOMCAT_HOME/conf/tomcatX.conf or /etc/default/tomcatX.conf file:

JAVA_OPTS="-Dmail.mime.decodeparameters=true -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -XX:+UseG1GC -Xms1024m -Xmx2048m"

For Windows

If Tomcat is not installed as a service:

• Edit $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/setenv.bat file (or create this file if it does not exist) and add the following:

  set CATALINA_OPTS=%CATALINA_OPTS% -Dmail.mime.decodeparameters=true -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -XX:+UseG1GC -Xms1024m -Xmx2048m
  

If Tomcat is installed and running as a service:

1. Right-click Tomcat's system tray icon and select Configure from the resulting popup menu, which opens the Apache Tomcat Properties dialog box.

2. In this dialog box, click on the Java tab and specify the following values (depending on available system memory):

   Field	Value
   Java Options (append to the existing value)	-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -Dmail.mime.decodeparameters=true -XX:+UseG1GC
   Initial memory pool	256 MB
   Maximum memory pool	2048 MB

For other environments and more information on memory settings, see the System Requirements.

4.5 Modify Tomcat's server.xml

In order for BellaDati to correctly display internationalized characters in user and group names, you need to modify the $TOMCAT_HOME/conf/server.xml file in your Tomcat installation directory by specifying the URIEncoding="UTF-8" property within the connector definition for your HTTP protocol.

The connector definition is specified by the following element in your server.xml file:

<Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
connectionTimeout="20000"
redirectPort="8443"/>

You should modify this element by specifying the URIEncoding="UTF-8" attribute:

<Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
connectionTimeout="20000"
redirectPort="8443" URIEncoding="UTF-8"/>

4.6 Modify Tomcat's context.xml

In order for Tomcat to be able to cache web resources of BellaDati a default value for the cache size must be modified. Modify the $TOMCAT_HOME/conf/context.xml file in your Tomcat installation directory by adding following line:

<Resources cacheMaxSize="51200" />

4.7 Set PID file for Tomcat

To be able to use Tomcat's bin/shutdown.sh or bin/shutdown.bat file to properly shutdown the Tomcat, a path to a file which will contain PID of started Tomcat needs to be set in CATALINA_PID environment variable.

For Linux/Solaris

Edit $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/setenv.sh file (or create this file if it does not exist) and add the following:

export CATALINA_PID=<absolute-path-to-pid-file>

For Windows

Edit $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/setenv.bat file (or create this file if it does not exist) and add the following:

set CATALINA_PID=<absolute-path-to-pid-file>

4.8 Configure location for logs

The default location for logs generated by BellaDati (see Configure logging for more details) is relative to the exploded belladati.war which is not suitable for long term storage. 

To change the logs directory, add a new JVM option -Dlogs.location=<location>, where <location> is the desired absolute path to the parent directory in which logs will be stored, to your Tomcat (see section 4.4 for more details on how to do it).

5. Start or Restart Tomcat

BellaDati is now ready to run in Tomcat.

Run as Service

Start the Tomcat service used for Belladati. Restart it if it's already running.

Run Manually

If Tomcat is not running as a service, start (or restart) the Tomcat server with Tomcat's bin/startup.sh or bin/startup.bat scripts.

Shutdown Manually

If Tomcat is not running as a service, you can stop the Tomcat server with Tomcat's bin/shutdown.sh or bin/shutdown.bat scripts if you set a CATALINA_PID environment variable with the path to a file containing PID of the running Tomcat.

6. Run the Setup Wizard

Point your browser to http://localhost:8080/belladati. This starts the Setup Wizard, which will take you through BellaDati's setup procedure.