Introduction:

Alfresco is the Open Source Alternative for Enterprise Content Management (ECM), providing Document Management, Collaboration, Records Management, Knowledge Management, Web Content Management and Imaging.
Alfresco.com

Alfresco is a nice looking suite that encompasses alot of Sharepoints features. It is designed for operability and once running should be easy to maintain. It is designed to be a main competitor for MS Sharepoint, however, its Linux and bad things can happen so for enterprise level solutions, maybe look at commercial licensing.

Installation of Alfresco Community Edition

Minimal installation of Fedora 7 running on a VMware machine installation.

-Installation included Development tools, development libraries and java.

Install the following with:

yum install tomcat5 tomcat5-common-lib tomcat5-jasper tomcat5-jsp-2.0-api tomcat5-server-lib tomcat5-servlet-2.4-api openoffice.org-base openoffice.org-calc openoffice.org-core openoffice.org-draw openoffice.org-graphicfilter openoffice.org-impress openoffice.org-math openoffice.org-writer openoffice.org-xsltfilter mysql-server mysql mysql-connector-java

Note:: mysql-connector will have to be reconfigured later.

Create and go to the following:

cd /opt
mkdir alfresco
cd alfresco

Get the following packages and put them in /opt/alfresco:

Note:: Install them when told, just get them for now.

From Alfresco.comwget the following packages:

alfresco-community-war
alfresco-community-sample-extensions
alfresco-community-wcm

Also get the following::

Sun's JDK 6 Update 4
JPackage 1.6.0 compat package

Install these two packages in this order and once again, leave the others until mentioned:

rpm -i jdk-6u4-linux-i586.rpm
rpm -i java-1.6.0-sun-compat-1.6.0.04-1jpp.i586.rpm

Check Java Version Environment:

alternatives --config java

Which should display the following:

1 /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.5.0-gcj/bin/java
+* 2 /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.6.0-sun/bin/java

The second option should have the * hopefully, and if not make the required changes.

As a final Java configuration test, you can run:

rpm -qa | grep java

Check to see that java-1.6.0-sun-compat-1.6.0.04-1jpp is listed.

Edit the following file and add the following line to the bottom:

vi /etc/sysconfig/tomcat5

JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Xms512m -Xmx512m"

Untarball the Alfresco war tarball in the /opt/alfresco directoy.

tar -xzf alfresco-community-war-2.1.0.tar.gz

Creating the Alfresco MySQL database::

chkconfig mysqld on
service mysqld start

Make the necessary changes to set your new MySQL admin password. Then import the alfesco database, included in the extras directory.

mysql -u root -p < ./extras/databases/mysql/db_setup.sql

Creating the Alfresco repository:

mkdir -p /var/lib/alfresco/alf_data/
chown -R tomcat.tomcat /var/lib/alfresco

Rebuild mysql-connector-java

rebuild-jar-repository /var/lib/tomcat5/common/endorsed mysql-connector-java

Note:: The reason for rebuilding the repository is so it can take advantage of the system we have configured and the different enviroment we desire.

Install Alfresco under Tomcat:

Install the Alfresco .war file under Tomcat:

cd /opt/alfresco/
cp alfresco.war /var/lib/tomcat5/webapps

service tomcat5 start
service tomcat5 stop

Modifying the basic Alfresco properties:

Now un-tar the alfresco-community-sample-extensions-x.x.x.tar.gz into the appropriate Tomcat extensions directory:

cd /var/lib/tomcat5/shared/classes

tar xzf /opt/alfresco/alfresco-community-sample-extensions-x.x.x.tar.gz

Rename the primary configuration sample files:

cd /var/lib/tomcat5/shared/classes/alfresco/extension

cp custom-repository-context.xml.sample custom-repository-context.xml

cp custom-repository.properties.sample custom-repository.properties

cp custom-hibernate-dialect.properties.sample custom-hibernate-dialect.properties

Make the following changes:

edit the file custom-repository.properties located in /var/lib/tomcat5/shared/classes/alfresco/extension:

paste dir.root=/var/lib/alfresco/alf_data under the line #dir.root=/srv/alfresco/data

Also uncomment the following lines:

db.username=alfresco

db.password=alfresco (your password goes here)

db.pool.initial=10

db.pool.max=100

db.driver=org.gjt.mm.mysql.Driver

db.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/alfresco

Enter the mysql database by the following command in the terminal:

mysql -u root -p and enter your password if you have already entered one for root.

mysql> set password for 'alfresco'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('alfrescosPasswordHere');

Note:: alfresco's password is the one you set in the above edited file.

Exit Mysql

cd /var/lib/tomcat5/webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/classes

Edit the file log4j.properties

Look in the section: ###### File appender definition ####### and modify the similar line to reflect the line below:

log4j.appender.File.File=/var/log/tomcat5/alfresco.log

Start Tomcat:

chkconfig tomcat5 on
service tomcat5 start

Firewall Settings:

If you don't have iptables on or installed modfy it to allow the following:

http://serverIP:8080/alfresco/

It should take quite awhile to load as it is making some changes.

The default username and password for admin is:

uname:admin
passwd:admin

Ad WCM Component

service tomcat5 stop

mkdir wcm
cd wcm
tar -zxvf ../alfresco-community-wcm-x.x.x.tar.gz
cp wcm-bootstrap context.xml /var/lib/tomcat5/shared/classes/alfresco/extension/

service tomcat5 start

Conclusion:

Ultimately, Alfresco is a nice system. It offers fluid manipulation and collaboration, while being seamless and database driven. However, it is still cryptic like MS sharepoint in its GUI and intriguing to learn.

References:

http://alfresco.com/
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Installing_Alfresco_Community_WAR_on_Centos_5
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Installing_Alfresco_on_Ubuntu_7.10
http://crashcourse.ca/wiki/index.php/Alfresco_on_Fedora_8