Deployment Receiver Engine Configuration

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The official documentation is at: http://docs.alfresco.com

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Table of Contents

• 1 Objective


• 2 Required properties


• 3 Approach


• 4 Configuration Parameter Triage


• 5 Effectively Constant Parameters
  
  
  
  • 5.1 Bean Reference
  
  
  • 5.2 Flags
  
  


• 6 Property File Parameters


• 7 XML Configuration Parameters
  
  
  
  • 7.1 authenticator
  
  
  • 7.2 transformers
  
  


• 8 deployment-engine-context.xml


• 9 deployment-engine.properties


• 10 See also

Objective

This page provides an overview of how to configure a Deployment Receiver Engine for use with deployment targets. This configuration does not depend on the transport protocol (HTTP, RMI), the type of target (AVM, DM, filesystem), or the environment in which the Deployment Receiver Engine runs (stand alone deployment receiver, Alfresco instance). Configuration parameters are grouped by the likelihood that the parameter will need to be adjusted and the means by which the parameter is adjusted.

This is not a complete configuration of a receiver: it lacks a transport protocol and targets. This page illustrates only how to configure the receiver engine. The configuration objectives addressed on this page are:

• Develop XML configuration for a Deployment Receiver Engine having reasonable defaults.
  
• Determine which properties are always the same, which can be set via property file, and which can vary (but which must be configured via XML configuration.)
  
• Articulate the options available for properties which require xml configuration
  
• Instantiate named beans which become available for use in external xml configuration files by reference to their ids:
  
  • deploymentReceiverEngine
    
  • targetAuthenticator
    
  • deploymentReceiverCommandQueue
    
  • commandQueueHousekeeper
    
  • deploymentReaderManagement
    
• Configure the Deployment Receiver Engine to use the same authentication bean as is made available to the targets (e.g., targetAuthenticator)
  
• Configure the Deployment Receiver Engine to uncompress the incoming data, then decrypt it.
  

Required properties

This configuration requires that the following properties be correctly set:

Property	Sets Property	On Component	Description
deployment.pollDelay	pollDelay	Deployment Receiver Engine	Determines the interval between calls to the housekeeper functions which maintain the command queue (presumably in seconds).
deployment.user	user	Simple implementation of Deployment Receiver Authenticator	Username for authentication (only necessary if using the simple username/password config)
deployment.password	password	Simple implementation of Deployment Receiver Authenticator	Password for authentication (only necessary if using the simple username/password config)
deployment.ciphername	cipherName	SampleEncryptionTransformer	Name of the encryption cipher to use (default 'PBEWithMD5AndDES')
deployment.cipherpass	password	SampleEncryptionTransformer	Password to use when generating key.

Approach

1. Triage of the Deployment Receiver Engine configuration parameters.
   
2. Configuration of the constant (or unlikely to change) parameters.
   
3. Configuration of parameters which may be set in a property file.
   
4. Articulate the common options for parameters which must be set with XML configuration.
   

Configuration Parameter Triage

In this section, all Deployment Receiver Engine parameters are classified into one of three groups: effectively constant, configurable via a setting in a property file, and configurable only via xml.

• Effectively constant
  
  • commandQueue
    
  • readerManagement
    
  • housekeepers
    
  • daemonThread
    
• Property file configuration
  
  • pollDelay
    
• XML configuration
  
  • authenticator (currently, only two options)
    
  • transformers (currently, this may have zero, one, or two transformers; and the order of the list may make a difference)
    

Effectively Constant Parameters

Bean Reference

Most of the effectively constant parameters involve setting the property to an instance of a bean which performs some necessary support function. This effectively initializes the engine. Some of these utility beans may be required elsewhere, so this configuration instantiates them with an id so that other beans may refer to them in other configuration files. The following table lists the bean id and class associated with each of these utility properties.

Property	Bean id	Bean class
commandQueue	deploymentReceiverCommandQueue	org.alfresco.deployment.impl.server.DeploymentCommandQueueImpl
housekeepers	commandQueueHousekeeper	org.alfresco.deployment.impl.server.DeploymentCommandQueueHousekeeper
readerManagement	deploymentReaderManagement	org.alfresco.deployment.impl.server.ReaderManagementPool

One final note: there is another housekeeper implementation available which applies only to file system deployment targets. However, this housekeeper is not configured on either the stand alone receiver or the alfresco instance. (See fileSystemReceiverHousekeeper) It also requires knowledge of the File System Receiver Service (if this engine has File System Deployment Targets), so it cannot be configured here. Although this configuration ignores this housekeeper, your situation may call for its use.

Flags

One effectively constant parameter (daemonThread) is a flag indicating whether or not the deploymentReceiverEngine requires a 'keep alive thread'. This must be true if the engine is running within Alfresco and false if it is running in a stand alone receiver. The default value is false. This parameter is considered effectively constant because it only depends on where the engine is running.

Property File Parameters

• The pollDelay parameter is a number representing the inverval between successive calls to the housekeepers, and is set by the deployment.pollDelay property.
  

XML Configuration Parameters

The configuration items in this section have 'options'. However, to make a choice requires that the xml files be changed to reflect that choice. The available options (i.e. options which are included with Alfresco) are described here.

authenticator

This property refers to a single Deployment Receiver Authenticator, of which there are two implementations packaged with Alfresco: a simple 'single username/password' version which works regardless of environment, and a full alfresco authenticator version, which works only if the deployment engine is running within an Alfresco instance. Conceptual details concerning the implementations included with Alfresco are available here.

There are only two choices for authentication, and it is an either-or choice: no combinations are possible. A configuration goal is to export an authentication bean with the id of targetAuthenticator, so that each individual target can use it.

Because there are only two choices, both will be included in the configuration file, with one commented out. The simple username and password mechanism will be the default, configured with user 'USERNAME' and password 'PASSWORD', to encourage administrators to customize these values. The xml file will be written such that only one of the options can be uncommented. To choose the Alfresco authentication method, comment out the 'simple' method and uncomment the 'alfresco' method.

Making the choice about authentication in this file allows the choice to be used with all the deployment targets.

transformers

Zero or more Deployment Transport Input Filters may be applied to the received data before the deployment receiver engine uses it. This is only valuable if the authoring server has applied content transformers to the data prior to sending it. The transformers property is a list, and the input filters are applied in the order specified in the list. Successful configuration requires that the input filters on the deployment engine be applied in the reverse order that the output filters were applied on the authoring server. For instance, if the authoring server encrypted the data, then compressed it, the deployment engine must uncompress the data, then decrypt it.

The two input filters supplied with Alfresco are really meant to be examples (as explained on the input filter page), but they are usable as-is. This configuration includes both filters. If they are not desired, remove them from the list.

The value of the transformers list configures all interaction with the deployment receiver, meaning all deployment targets inherit this behavior.

deployment-engine-context.xml

<beans>
    
    <bean id='deploymentReceiverCommandQueue' class='org.alfresco.deployment.impl.server.DeploymentCommandQueueImpl' > 
    </bean> 
    
    <bean id='deploymentReaderManagement' class='org.alfresco.deployment.impl.server.ReaderManagementPool' > 
    </bean> 
    
    <bean id='commandQueueHousekeeper' class='org.alfresco.deployment.impl.server.DeploymentCommandQueueHousekeeper'
        init-method='init'>
        <property name='commandQueue'><ref bean='deploymentReceiverCommandQueue' /></property>
    </bean>
    

    <bean id='targetAuthenticator'
        class='org.alfresco.repo.deploy.DeploymentReceiverAuthenticatorAuthenticationService'
        init-method='init'>
        <property name='authenticationService'>
            <ref bean='AuthenticationService'/>
        </property>
    </bean>
    
    <bean id='deploymentReceiverEngine' 
        class='org.alfresco.deployment.impl.server.DeploymentReceiverEngineImpl' 
        init-method='init'>
        
        <property name='commandQueue'>
            <ref bean='deploymentReceiverCommandQueue'/>
        </property>        
        <property name='readerManagement'>
            <ref bean='deploymentReaderManagement' />
        </property>
        <property name='housekeepers'>
            <set>
                <ref bean='commandQueueHousekeeper'/>
            </set>
        </property>
        
        <property name='daemonThread'><value>false</value></property>
        
        <property name='pollDelay'><value>${deployment.pollDelay}</value></property>
        

        <property name='authenticator'>
            <ref bean='targetAuthenticator'/>
        </property>
        
        <property name='transformers'> 
            <list>
                <bean class='org.alfresco.deployment.transformers.CompressionTransformer'/>
                <bean class='org.alfresco.deployment.transformers.SampleEncryptionTransformer'>
                    <property name='cipherName'>
                        <value>${deployment.ciphername}</value>
                    </property>
                    <property name='password'>
                        <value>${deployment.cipherpass}</value>
                    </property>
                </bean>
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>
</beans>

deployment-engine.properties

These properties, when added to a properties file, control the configuration of the deployment receiver engine.

deployment.pollDelay=5000
deployment.user=USERNAME
deployment.password=PASSWORD
deployment.ciphername=PBEWithMD5AndDES
deployment.cipherpass=ANOTHERPASSWORD

See also

• See alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/subsystems/wcm_deployment_receiver/default/deployment-receiver-context.xml in the tomcat webapps directory after alfresco.war has been exploded. This contains the default configuration of the Deployment Receiver Engine within an Alfresco instance.
  
• See deployment-receiver-context.xml in SVN. This contains the default configuration of the Deployment Receiver Engine in the stand alone deployment receiver.
  
• Deployment Receiver Authenticator
  
• Deployment Transport IO Filter
  

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