Installation Procedure

This chapter contains step-by-step instructions for installing the Content Engine on a single host computer or on a cluster of several host computers. The instructions use the host names listed in Identifying Host Machines to indicate where you should carry out various steps. If some of your hosts are "multi-purpose" (if for example, your database server is installed on the same host as your editorial Content Engine installation), then carry out all appropriate steps on that machine (for example, all database-host steps and all editorial-host steps).

Some of the steps are not required for single-host deployment. These steps are clearly marked.

Choosing an installation method

Until recently, all Escenic-supplied components had to be installed by manually downloading and unpacking archive files. This is no longer the case. The Content Engine itself, the assembly tool and the ece scripts are now all available as apt packages (for installing on Ubuntu/Debian systems) and as rpm packages (for installation on RedHat/CentOS systems). This is now the recommended method of installing Escenic systems, although it is still possible to use the old method based on manually downloading and unpacking archives.

Using the new package installation method offers many advantages over the old manual installation procedure:

  • It is faster and quicker

  • It is significantly less error-prone

  • It supports a fully automated upgrade process in which not only the installed packages themselves are upgraded, but also deployed EAR files. An upgrade script automatically checks the EAR files for copies of JAR files that have been updated, and replaces then with the new versions.

The old installation method will continue to be documented for the moment. Components installed using the new method are installed in /usr/share/escenic, whereas the old method recommends installation in /opt/escenic, and some other path components are slightly different. To cope with these differences, the following placeholders are used in some paths:

Placeholder NEW METHOD path OLD METHOD path

engine-installation

/usr/share/escenic/escenic-content-engine-6.8.8-1

/opt/escenic/engine

assemblytool_installation

/usr/share/escenic/escenic-assemblytool

/opt/escenic/assemblytool

There are a number of preparatory tasks that you need to carry out whichever installation method you choose. These are described in Preparation. Once you have completed these tasks, you continue either by following the steps described in Package-based Installation (recommended) or Old-style Installation. Finally, whichever installation method you choose, you will need to finish up by assembling and deploying an EAR file containing the supplied Escenic web applications, checking that everything is installed correctly and so on, as described in Finishing Up.