Install the Tomcat bundle

The easiest way to install eXo Platform is to use the Tomcat bundle. This is a ready-made package on top of the Tomcat 6 application server. First, you need to download and extract the package named eXo-Platform-tomcat-3.5.x.zip on your server.

Start up the server

eXo Platform leverages the application server on which it is deployed. This means that you only need to start and stop your application with the default commands.

On Linux and OS X:

$TOMCAT_HOME/start_eXo.sh

On Windows:

%TOMCAT_HOME%\start_eXo.bat

The server is started successfully when you see the following message in your log/console:

INFO: Server startup in 353590 ms

Shut down the server

On Linux and OS X:

$TOMCAT_HOME/stop_eXo.sh

On Windows:

%TOMCAT_HOME%\stop_eXo.bat

If you receive the message when you try to stop Tomcat as below, you must stop Tomcat by pressing Ctrl+C or by killing with the -9 command. To perform the kill action automatically, you can run stop_eXo.sh -force that is only available on Linux and OS X systems.

Tomcat did not stop in time. The PID file was not removed.

The server has been stopped successfully when you see the following message in your log/console:

INFO: Stopping Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-8080

Start up eXo Platform by running built-in startup scripts

You can start up eXo Platform by running one of the following built-in startup scripts:

Linux & OS X: start_eXo.sh
Windows: start_eXo.bat
Linux and OS X in the developer mode: start_eXo.sh with the -debug option.
Windows in the developer mode: start_eXo.bat with the -debug option.

In the normal mode, the start_eXo scripts launch eXo Platform with the following JVM options:

-Xms256m 
-Xmx1024m 
-XX:MaxPermSize=256m 
-Djava.security.auth.login.config=../conf/jaas.conf  
-Dexo.conf.dir.name=gatein/conf 
-Dexo.profiles=default

Details:

`-Xms`	Minimal Heap Size (defaults to 256 MB).
`-Xmx`	Maximal Heap Size (defaults to 1 GB).
`-Djava.security.auth.login.config`	Path to the JAAS security file where the security domains and JAAS authentication modules are declared.
`-Dexo.conf.dir.name`	Path where eXo Platform will start looking at configuration.properties and configuration.xml.
`-Dexo.profiles`	List of comma-separated profiles of eXo Plaform to activate.

In the developer mode, the start_eXo scripts launch eXo Platform in the developer mode with a few JVM options.

-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8000,server=y,suspend=n 
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote 
-Dorg.exoplatform.container.configuration.debug 
-Dexo.product.developing=true

Details:

`-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote`	Activate the remote JMX monitoring.
`-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket, address=8000,server=y,suspend=n`	Enable the remote debugging.
`-Dorg.exoplatform.container. configuration.debug`	The container will log in to the console which the .xml file loads.
`-Dexo.product.developing=true`	Deactivate JavaScript and CSS merging for debugging more easily. Next, activate a special language called Magic Locale "ma" showing the property keys instead of the translations.

Now, you can start and run the eXo Platform demo, but you will need to adjust these values for a production setup.

Customize environment variables in Tomcat

Previously, users got used to changing the gatein.sh file, but this file is no longer used since Platform 3.5.0-CR1. Now, to customize the environment variables and JVM memory parameters, you have to modify the setenv.sh file (setenv.bat file in Windows).

This file is located in:

Linux & OS X:

$TOMCAT_HOME/bin/setenv.sh

Windows:

$TOMCAT_HOME\bin\setenv.bat

The following is the content of this file:

LOG_OPTS="-Dorg.apache.commons.logging.Log=org.apache.commons.logging.impl.SimpleLog"
SECURITY_OPTS="-Djava.security.auth.login.config=../conf/jaas.conf"
EXO_OPTS="-Dexo.product.developing=false -Dexo.conf.dir.name=gatein/conf"
IDE_OPTS="-Djavasrc=$JAVA_HOME/src.zip -Djre.lib=$JAVA_HOME/jre/lib"
if [ "$EXO_PROFILES" = "" -o "$EXO_PROFILES" = "-Dexo.profiles=default" ] ; then 
	EXO_PROFILES="-Dexo.profiles=default"
fi

CATALINA_OPTS="-Xms256m -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m $CATALINA_OPTS $LOG_OPTS $SECURITY_OPTS $EXO_OPTS $IDE_OPTS $EXO_PROFILES"
export CATALINA_OPTS

Note

In Linux environments, the ulimit limits the system-wide resource used. When running eXo Platform, you may get the error message about "Too many open files" because the ulimit had limited the opened files. By default, the number of open files is limited to "1024". You should execute the command "ulimit -n 8196" as root before starting the server to avoid this issue.