Manual Installation Instructions

Owned by Karl Henselin
Last updated: May 03, 2023
8 min read

The FlexDeploy distribution contains the following components:

  • A tomcat 9 server with required libraries, and base configurations

  • The FlexDeploy WAR

  • The FlexDeploy database installation scripts

  • The FlexDeploy database migration scripts (for upgrading an existing FlexDeploy Tomcat installation)

  • The FlexDeploy plugins

Unless you are running on Windows or have been advised by Flexagon Support, consider using the Automated Linux installer instead.

Requirements 

See FlexDeploy System Requirements for details on software and hardware requirements

Installation Instructions

Adjust for Windows path if you are installing on Windows platform.

Step 1. Ensure Java 8 is installed on the server.

In this example, JAVA_HOME is /u01/java/jdk1.8.0_281 but it can be anything you want. If default java is not version 8, then we will need to adjust for it during Step 7 later. 

Step 2. Prepare software

FlexDeploy can be downloaded from the Flexagon Support Site. You will download specific version of FlexDeploy, download file is named Tomcat_Complete-X.X.X.X.zip, where X.X.X.X represents four digit version number.

Extract the zip file in the desired location (referred to as "FLEXDEPLOY_HOME" in this document). See example below, where zip was extracted in /u01/flexdeploy folder.

We recommend use of folder structure without any space in name.

cd /u01 mkdir -p flexdeploy cd flexdeploy unzip <location of distribution zip>/Tomcat_Complete-X.X.X.X.zip

Here is how it will look like after unzip.

Step 3. Setup database and schemas

Setup the appropriate database, if you not already done so.

Manual Installation Instructions - Database Tier - Oracle

Manual Installation Instructions - Database Tier - PostgreSQL

Step 4. Update Tomcat context.xml

Modify Tomcat configuration file (context.xml) for database connectivity depending on your database type.

  • Replace the contents of context.xml with the contents the context-<type>.xml if using PostgreSQL.

  • Replace URL and Password with the actual values.

File - <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>/apache-tomcat-flexdeploy/conf/context.xml

Follow the instructions provided here to connect to Oracle Autonomous databases.

Oracle

<Resource name="jdbc/flexdbDS" auth="Container" type="oracle.ucp.jdbc.PoolDataSource" factory="oracle.ucp.jdbc.PoolDataSourceImpl" connectionFactoryClassName="oracle.jdbc.pool.OracleDataSource" minPoolSize="0" maxPoolSize="100" initialPoolSize="0" autoCommit="false" inactiveConnectionTimeout="300" url="**CONNECT_STRING**" user="fd_admin" password="**FD_ADMIN_PASSWORD**" fastConnectionFailoverEnabled="true" validationQuery="select 1 from dual" testOnBorrow="true" useLocalSessionState="true" defaultAutoCommit="false"/>

PostgreSQL

<Resource name="jdbc/flexdbDS" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" driverClassName="org.postgresql.Driver" url="**CONNECT_STRING**" username="fd_admin" password="**FD_ADMIN_PASSWORD**" maxTotal="100" maxIdle="20" validationQuery="select 1" testOnBorrow="true" defaultTransactionIsolation="READ_COMMITTED" useLocalSessionState="true" defaultAutoCommit="false"/>

Step 5. (Optional) Update Tomcat server.xml

Modify Tomcat server.xml if necessary. If you want to use different port or setup https, the you would need to update server.xml.

File - <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>/apache-tomcat-flexdeploy/conf/server.xml

  • By default, the Tomcat server is configured to run on port 8000. If this port is in use, change to some other unused port. Search for <Connector port="8000" protocol="HTTP/1.1" if you want to change it.

  • There are other ports referenced in the server.xml file as well. If the logs contain a port in use error, you can find the open ports on your machine and then search this file for ports that you find are in use and change them.

Step 6. (Optional) Update setenvoverride

Modify Tomcat Environment script (setenvoverride.sh or setenvoverride.bat) for FlexDeploy server side directories, memory specifications or JAVA_HOME.

File - <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>/apache-tomcat-flexdeploy/bin/setenvoverride.sh (setenvoverride.bat on windows). Main reason to modify this file is to configure specific JAVA_HOME. Other variables can be left as is for default configurations.

  • Configure variable JAVA_HOME to use specific version of Java for FlexDeploy tomcat process.

Following other variables are recommended to be left unchanged from default.

  • Configure variable FD_APPLICATION_DIRECTORY with directory to use as the FlexDeploy application directory (See System Requirements for more information about how much space is needed.)

  • Configure variable FD_REPOSITORY_DIRECTORY with the directory to host the FlexDeploy artifact repository (See System Requirements for more information about how much space is needed.)

Below are default artifact and working directories created under FLEXDEPLOY_HOME when you extracted zip file.

Default setenvoverride.sh is shown below.

Modify Tomcat Environment script (setenvoverride.sh or setenvoverride.bat) for JAVA_HOME.

File - <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>/apache-tomcat-flexdeploy/bin/setenvoverride.sh (setenvoverride.bat on windows)

 If you were also setting JAVA_HOME, this file would look like this.

Step 7. Update database driver (Only if using Oracle Database)

  • Clean up old ojdbc jars from <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>\apache-tomcat-flexdeploy\lib.

  • Save new driver jars from downloaded jdbc driver to <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>\apache-tomcat-flexdeploy\libext. You may have done this already as part of Step 4. Make sure that if you copied the jars for libext of your backup to your new libext, you don’t end up with multiple versions of the Oracle JDBC jars. If migrating from an old version of FlexDeploy, you may want to clean your libext folder and start with a new Oracle Database driver download.

  • UCP is now required for Oracle Database connections.

Linux

Windows

Step 8. Set execute permission (Linux only)

Set the shell scripts executable with this command.

Step 9. Adjust for non-default server side directories

If you are using non-default server side directories, then move all the jar files from <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>/application/plugins to FD_APPLICATION_DIRECTORY/plugins. At startup, FlexDeploy will load all the plugins.

Step 10. Configure Influx database

Download links for the influx database software and client, if not already downloaded.

Influx database software

Influx database client

Untar the influx database software and client to the desired location.

Adjust the influx database configuration file. <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>/influxdb/config/config.yaml

Linux

Check your open file limits. Influx opens a large number of files to complete its work.

ulimit -Hn

will show the open file limit for the current user. Make sure you run it as the user who will be executing FlexDeploy and Influx.

If it is less that 65536, we recommend raising it.

sudo vi /etc/security/limits.conf

where oracle is the user logged into the box to run FlexDeploy:

oracle soft nofile 16384

oracle hard nofile 65536

Windows

Change the following locations: You must put absolute path as no environment variables are allowed in this file.

Linux

  • bolt-path: from <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>/influxdb/data/influxd.bolt to <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>/application/vsm/data/influxd.bolt

  • engine-path: from <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>/influxdb/data/engine to <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>/application/vsm/data/engine

  • sqlite-path: <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>/influxdb/data/influxd.sqlite to <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>/application/vsm/data/influxd.sqlite

Windows

  • bolt-path: from <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>\influxdb\data\influxd.bolt to <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>\application\vsm\data\influxd.bolt

  • engine-path: from <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>\influxdb\data\engine to <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>\application\vsm\data\engine

  • sqlite-path: <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>\influxdb\data\influxd.sqlite to <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>\application\vsm\data\influxd.sqlite

Setup the config file for FlexDeploy to connect to influxdb.

Create the file <FLEXDEPLOY_HOME>/influxdb/config/fdinflux.config with the following contents, modifed appropriately for your install.

Step 11. Start tomcat

Linux

Windows

Linux

Windows

Note for Oracle XE Database

Step 12. Launch FlexDeploy in your browser.

  • http://hostname:8000/flexdeploy

    • Update hostname in URL to indicate host where FlexDeploy is installed.

    • Update port if you had modified server.xml for different port number.

  • You will need to complete Initial Registration process, where you will create admin user for login.

Step 13. Verification

Go to Administration - Plugins on FlexDeploy. Verify that Plugins are loaded. You should not see any files remaining in FD_APPLICATION_DIRECTORY/plugins folder after a few minutes.

Step 14. FlexDeploy configuration

Now that you have installed FlexDeploy, let's get start with configuration. You can do this in matter of minutes by using Blueprints concept, which is very simple configuration wizard for most common usecases.

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