DesInventar-Web Installation & Operations Guide
MANUAL INSTALLATION
For advanced Users or Users with other Java Web Applications
DesInventar Server 7
Version 7.0.1
December 2005.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents 2
Send Us Your Comments 3
Installation Overview 4
Introducing DesInventar Server 7 5
DesInventar Requirements 6
Internet Connection requirements 6
Software requirements 6
Manual Installation Requirements: 7
Database requirements 7
Hardware requirements 8
Using the DesInventar Server Installer 9
Manual Installation of DesInventar 21
Installation of the Java2 platform software 21
Installation of Tomcat 23
Testing the Installation 24
Deploying DesInventar Web Application 24
Configuring Tomcat 26
Appendix A 32
WINDOWS Installation of the Java2 platform software 32
Installation of Tomcat 36
Send Us Your Comments
This section describes how to contact LA RED/DesInventar Web-Development team if you have issues with the documentation or software. It also provides a list of useful resources for administrators and developers.
Send us email to If you...
Have issues with Documentation
Have issues with Software
You can visit us at http://www.desinventar.org
And at http://www.desinventar.net
This product may use or reference software from the following third parties:
Official Java/JSP site:
http://java.sun.com
Oracle Corporation (Oracle 8i, 9i)
http://www.oracle.com
Microsoft Corporation (MS Visual Basic, MS Access, MS SQL Server)
http://www.microsoft.com
Apache Software foundation (Apache and Tomcat servers):
http://www.apache.org
Official Tomcat web site:
http://jakarta.apache.org/
Installation Overview
DesInventar-web is a 100% pure Java application running using a JSP (Java Server Pages) powered interface. As such it requires a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and a JSP/Servlet container to run and support al its features, usually the Apache Tomcat server.
For most users installation is a straightforward process, as simple as inserting a CD in the disc drive and following the instructions of the installer.
Some other more sophisticated users may want to take advantage of advanced Database management systems and/or other versions of Tomcat or other Java Application Servers. Those users should follow the instructions in the Manual Installation Section.
Introducing DesInventar Server 7
One of the flagship products of LA RED, DesInventar is a full-featured, 100% Java, platform and database independent Internet application. It allows multiple simultaneous users being capable of remotely updating the Disaster inventory database taking advantage of Internet connections.
As it’s brother, the stand-alone version of DesInventar it is composed of two clearly separated modules, a data management/entry tool and an analysis/query tool.
DesInventar supports the most popular search engines and databases, including Oracle, MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL and MS Access.
DesInventar is dynamically configured, fed and controlled via a web interface powered by a Java Application Server.
This JSP/Java implementation has been successfully tested in the following OS platforms:
· Windows (98, 2000 pro, 2000 server, 2003 server, XP home/Pro).
· Sun Solaris 8
· Linux Redhat 7.2
· Hewlett Packard HP-UX 11
This document focuses entirely in the deployment and installation of DesInventar in Windows environments. However, it can be used as general guide for other operating systems, in which it must be installed manually.
DesInventar Requirements
There are several requirements to run the System (in this document the word ‘System’ is used as a synonym of ‘DesInventar’):
Internet Connection requirements
Clients:
DesInventar makes intensive use of the connection to Internet. A dial-up connection to the Internet is considered enough generally for Clients, but depending on user requirements it can provide a slow service.
A high-speed Internet connection is highly recommended. The higher the volume of Datacards to retrieve and process, the higher speed recommended.
Servers:
The DesInventar Server must run in an environment with high Internet connectivity. In case of an Intranet server, a normal LAN (10/100 baseT) will be more than enough.
For Internet servers, the bandwidth must be calculated base on number of clients, expected size of the queries and updates and response time expectations.
Please note that in many cases DesInventar will require a lot of bandwidth, which can be an issue especially if DesInventar is to be run in the same machine that serves another web sites. DesInventar will consume also processor, memory and database resources.
In such cases is recommended to run DesInventar in a separate machine with an independent Internet connection.
Software requirements
Being a pure Java application, DesInventar can run in almost any software platform. It has been tested and successfully run in the several Operating Systems. However, this guide is intended for administrators of Windows operating systems.
While Clients of DIS7 can run in almost any version of Windows higher that Win95, Servers should run at the minimum in one of the following:
Windows NT, Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003.
In the case of Intranet servers Windows 2000 Profesional or Windows XP professional can be considered.
Manual Installation Requirements:
The main requirement to implement a DI Server is an appropriate JVM, supporting Java2 Standard Edition, SDK version 1.3 or higher. The System also requires a JSP/Servlet container that implements the Servlet 2.3 and JSP 1.2 specification.
No extra software is required (except the database software, of course) in order to run DesInventar itself.
Among others, the following Web Servers and Application Servers comply with these requirements:
- Tomcat 4 or 5
- IBM Websphere
- Bea WebLogic
- Sun ONE application Server
- Sun Java Web Server
- Oracle Application Server
Database requirements
DesInventar software uses JDBC to connect to relational database engines. Although in theory the JDBC presents a uniform interface to any ‘standard’ SQL driven database, the reality is that there are several incompatibilities among the different implementations of SQL and datatypes in the market.
DesInventar has been tested with the following database/indexing systems:
- Oracle 8i, Oracle 9i, Oracle 10g, Oracle 10express.
- MS Access
- MS SQL Server 2000 or higher
- PostgreSQL 7.4 or higher
In theory DesInventar should run MySQL with no problems, but newer versions hasn’t been tested yet.
No tests have been performed on other databases like DB2, etc.
Hardware requirements
DesInventar requires:
- a Minimum of 256 Mb. Of Ram, that may be higher depending on the number of concurrent users.
- 100Mbs approximately for Java and Tomcat and depending on the number of databases and documents (DATACARDS) anything above 100Mbs of additional hard disk space.
Manual Installation of DesInventar
Manual Installation Overview
This section shows how to install DesInventar software in a specific JSP/Servlet container (Tomcat 4.x or 5.x).
Other JSP/Servlet containers may be used instead of Tomcat, and the application itself has been built in such a way that it’s independent of the container, as a standard Java Web Application.
The installation of DesInventar in such an environment (Java 2/ Tomcat) involves several steps:
- Downloading and Installing a Java 2 Standard Edition JDK (Java Development Kit)
- Downloading and Installing Tomcat
- Deploying DesInventar Web Application
- Creating the database connections and tables DesInventar will use
- Configuring the system
- Other post-installation tasks (such as configuring a firewall, etc.)
The distribution CD contains downloads of both Java 2 (JDK 1.5) and Tomcat (Tomcat 5.1) suitable for DesInventar. However, if the end system requirements are different, DesInventar should run with other versions of both the JDK and Tomcat.
This document assumes that an appropriate operating system has been set-up and configured, as well as the database engine has been installed and it’s up and running.
Please note that most configuration issues involve providing DesInventar with the appropriate drivers and database access parameters. More info on this can be found in the next few sections.
The installation of DesInventar in an environment with Java 2 and Tomcat 4.1 involves several steps:
Installation of the Java2 platform software
Start by downloading the Java 2 Standard Edition JDK (Java Development Kit) from:
http://java.sun.com/j2se
The latest version of the JDK at the moment of this writing
Note there are two packages available: the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) and the JDK itself. You must download the full JDK, or use the copy of the JDK installer for Windows supplied in the distribution CD.
To install the JDK just follow the instructions of the installer. We recommend installing the JDK in a directory at the root level, with a short name (i.e /jdk1.3), with no embedded spaces. This will greatly simplify the path and class path names and will avoid problems caused by spaces in names.
A JDK interactive installer is supplied for Windows environments. Please refer to Appendix A for a detailed explanation on how to use this Windows installer.
Installation of Tomcat
Tomcat can be downloaded from the Apache web site at:
http://apache.mirrored.ca/jakarta/tomcat-4/binaries
For Windows installations you can use the download of Tomcat 4.1.XX supplied with the distribution CD.
Configuring and setting up Tomcat requires several steps: deploying the Tomcat software itself, that must be done after installing the full Java 2 development kit (JDK 1.3/4), defining the environment variables and modifying/editing several configuration files.
The software (Tomcat latest release of v. 4.1.X) is to be downloaded from jakarta.apache.com as a binary distribution and installed in the hard disk.
The procedure to install Tomcat will vary from platform to platform. On Unix like environments Tomcat is distributed as a gzipped tarball. The gunzip utility will be needed to decompress and later untar the file. Please refer to the on-line documentation for more information about this process.
An interactive installer is supplied for Windows environments. Please refer to Appendix A for a detailed explanation on how to use the Windows installer.
In a Windows environment we suggest to install Tomcat in the C: drive (to reduce to the maximum problems of drive management, as the Tomcat service will run from and try to access files by default in C:).
We strongly suggest to rename the directory Jakarta-tomcat-4.1.XX to tomcat for simplicity.
The DesInventar application distribution CD contains a copy of the Windows based Installer for Tomcat version 4.1.18 (against which the application was developed and tested).
We recommend installing Tomcat:
- in Unix like environments in /usr/local/tomcat
- in Windows in c:\tomcat
Testing the Installation
To confirm that the installation was successful do the following:
Open an Internet Explorer in the web server machine.
Type http://localhost:8080 in the address bar, and hit the ‘enter’ key. It is assumed here that Tomcat was installed in port 8080. Please change the port number accordingly. If Tomcat was installed in port 80 no port specification is required, just type http://localhost
If everything was properly installed, the screen should look like:
This test can be performed from the localhost machine or from any other machine using the network name of the computer instead of ‘localhost’.
Deploying DesInventar Web Application
Copying the files: The installation of the software is extremely simple, it’s just copying the directory DesInventar in the distribution CD to a suitable place in the hard disk.
WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND TO COPY DESINVENTAR SOFTWARE TO THE /webapps FOLDER OF TOMCAT. This follows the standard for deployment of Java2/JSP/Servlet web applications.
The directory with default properties, /etc/DesInventar with all the files it contains must be also copied. The folder /etc exists by default in Unix like environments but it must be created in Windows. The structure /etc/DesInventar must exist, no matter the OS.
Removing the read-only attribute: on certain operating systems the copy operation will also copy the read-only status that files have in a CD. Such attribute must be changed manually.
In a Windows environment use the attrib command in a DOS command window:
attrib –r c:\xxxxx\DesInventar\* /s
OR
attrib –r c:\tomcat\webappss\DesInventar\* /s
also:
attrib –r c:\etc\DesInventar\* /s
Where xxxxx is the folder where DesInventar was copied, typically under tomcat/webapps.
Permissions: must be set so that the user running Tomcat and DesInventar has access to all directories involved. This is especially critical in Unix like systems :
/etc/DesInventar/*
/usr/local/tomcat/* (or wherever tomcat is installed)
/xxx/DesInventar/* (or wherever DesInventar is installed).
Another issue to consider with Unix-like systems is the permission to use ports less that 1024. Only the root user can start processes that take these ports.
Setting environment variables: Environment variables tell the system where to find specific pieces of software.
In Windows operating system NO environment variables must be set. In a Unix like environment it is somewhat more complex as it needs settings for PATH, JAVA_HOME and TOMCAT_HOME. Please refer to the end of Appendix A on how to set these variables and their values.
In addition to these variables the Unix environments usually need the shared library paths that will allow software components to locate dynamic libraries.
These environment variables can be declared in a variety of places, ranging from the user profile files (.profile) to the specific scripts where they can be temporarily declared using setenv or set … export, depending on the shell.
The technique suggested with DesInventar is the later. Example Unix (Linux, to be specific) scripts can be found in the /xxxxx/DesInventar/WEB-INF/classes directories.
The administrator will have to customize the according to the settings of the system and the database and/or indexing engine used.
Determining and making available drivers: JDBC drivers for databases must be made available to DesInventar and Tomcat. The easiest way of accomplishing this is to copy the jar files corresponding to the drivers to the directory /usr/local/tomcat/common/lib (or c:\tomcat\common\lib on a windows machine), if the drivers are to be used across all applications, OR copy them to the WEB-INF/lib directory of the DesInventar application if the drivers are to be used only by DesInventar.
Each vendor is responsible for supplying these driver files. Oracle supplies them as zip files, which have to be unpacked and the converted to jar format using the command jar, supplied with the Java installer.
Configuring Tomcat
There are several configuration files required to run Tomcat (all of them located in the directory conf under the main Tomcat directory: