Installing Alfresco components

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

InstallationLabs 3LinuxUbuntu
This page describes the components that integrate with Alfresco. These can be installed anytime before or after installing Alfresco.

• Installing Microsoft Office® Add-ins
  
• Installing Flash Player
  
• Installing SWFTools
  

Table of Contents

• 1 Installing Microsoft Office Add-ins


• 2 Installing Flash Player


• 3 Installing SWFTools
  
  
  
  • 3.1 Windows Installation
  
  
  • 3.2 Linux and Unix Installation
    
    
    
    • 3.2.1 Common Notes:
    
    
    • 3.2.2 For RedHat, Fedora or Centos users:
    
    
    • 3.2.3 For Ubuntu users:
    
    
  
  

Installing Microsoft Office Add-ins

This section describes how to install Alfresco Add-ins for Microsoft® Office applications, such as Word,
Excel, and PowerPoint.

Before you start, ensure that:

• The .NET Programmability Support option is installed for each of the Office applications that you are installing the Add-ins such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint). To find these options, run the Office Setup program and expand the list of available options for each application. You may require your original Office 2007 install media to add these required components.
  
• The installing user has Windows administrator privileges.
  
• Any Microsoft Office applications on your system are NOT running, including Outlook if you use Word as an email editor.
  

To install and configure Microsoft Office Add-ins:

1. Run the Microsoft setup file: alfresco-enterprise-office2003-addins-3.0.zip. This file can be downloaded from Installing Labs 3. This example refers to the Office installer that installs all three Add-ins. You can also use individual installers to add Alfresco to one of the three Office applications.
   

These individual installers are:

• alfresco-enterprise-word2003-addin.zip
  
• alfresco-enterprise-excel2003-addin.zip
  
• alfresco-enterprise-powerpoint2003-addin.zip
  

6. Run setup.exe. If required, the setup program will download the required components from the Microsoft website.
   These components are .NET 2.0 framework, and Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition runtime.
   
7. Run the Office application, for example, Word. A Welcome window with configuration options displays.
   
8. In the Web Client URL area, enter the location to the Alfresco web client. For example: http://server:8080/alfresco/
   
9. In the WebDAV URL area, append webdav/ to the web client URL. For example: http://server:8080/alfresco/webdav/
   
10. In the CIFS Server area, enter the path to the CIFS server. The Add-in will try to auto-complete this value, but you should verify for the correct address. For example: \\server_a\alfresco\ or \\servera\alfresco\
    
11. In the Authentication area, enter your Alfresco user name and password. If you are using the CIFS interface, authentication is usually automatic. However, sometimes the Add-in presents your Alfresco user name and password for authentication. All values are stored in the Windows registry and your password is encrypted against casual hacking attempts.
    
12. Click Save Settings.
    

Installing Flash Player

Alfresco Share uses Flash Player for viewing Flash previews and also when you use the multi-file upload facility. This is optional and may be installed after you have installed Alfresco.

To install Flash Player:

1. Browse to Adobe's Flash Player download website: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer
   
2. Download version 9 of Flash Player for your platform (there are known issues with Flash player 10 which has a new security policy that is incompatible with the version of YUI used in Alfreco 3.0)[ETHREEOH-483]. Flash Player 9 can be downloaded from here: http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_14266&sliceId=1
   
3. Browse to the location of your downloaded file and install the application. A wizard guides you through the installation.
   
4. When the installation is complete, click Close.
   

Installing SWFTools

Alfresco Share uses the pdf2swf utility of the SWFTools for previewing PDF files. The pdf2swf utility generates one frame per page of fully formatted text inside a Flash movie. This is optional and may be installed after you have installed Alfresco.

Alfresco Share leverages the features provided in the Development snapshots of the tools. Install a version post 0.8.1. Use the last development snapshots, because version 0.8.1 from 2007-02-28 does not support some functionalities Alfresco needs to render the preview.

If you encounter issues with the snapshot that you have installed, please swap out the version you are using as a first step in troubleshooting.

Refer to the site: http://www.swftools.org/ for installation instructions. However, here are some guidelines.

Note, the following version has been tested and verified by Alfresco as being fully functional: http://www.swftools.org/swftools-2008-10-08-0802.tar.gz (note, you may have to copy this URL and paste it into a download manager).
See also https://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/ETHREEOH-2916

Windows Installation

1. Browse to the SWF Tools download website: pdf2swf
   
2. Download the latest Development snapshot version of the SWF Tools for your platform. The windows version is designated with the suffix .exe.
   
3. Browse to the location of your downloaded file and and install the application. A wizard guides you through the installation.
   
4. Accept the license agreement and click Next.
   
5. Select the installation directory.
   
6. Select whether you want to install the SWF Tools for all users or only for the current user.
   
7. Click Next to begin the install process. By default, the options to Create start menu and Create desktop shortcut are selected.
   
8. Click Finish. The SWF Tools are installed.
   

Linux and Unix Installation

To date there are no Unix binary versions provided directly on the SWF Tools site, so compilation is necessary to get it working:

1. Browse to the SWF Tools download website: http://www.swftools.org
   
2. Download the latest version of the SWF Tools for your platform. The Unix version is designated with the suffix .tar.gz.
   
3. Unpack the tar.gz file, and follow the instructions provided in the INSTALL file.
   

Common Notes:

• Use ./configure --disable-lame to disable the lame libraries. These are not required, and distributions like RHEL do not include them by default.
  
• Java in Unix is not so efficient in doing a Runtime.exec() call for external processes. If you see an error like this:
  

Execution result: 
   os:         Linux
   command:    [/usr/local/bin/pdf2swf, -T, 9, /opt/alfresco/tomcat/temp/Alfresco/RuntimeExecutableContentTransformer_source_29423.pdf, -o, /opt/alfresco/tomcat/temp/Alfresco/R
untimeExecutableContentTransformer_target_29424.swf]
   succeeded:  false
   exit code:  1
   out:        
   err:        Cannot run program '/usr/local/bin/pdf2swf': java.io.IOException: error=12, Cannot allocate memory

This is because Java is trying to do a clone() call - which requires as much memory as the original process, until it finally does the execve('pdf2swf', ...). Make sure you have enough physical memory + swap to perform this allocation. It is only needed temporarily, but will return an error if you don't do it. This inherit Runtime.exec() behaviour is outlined here and here.

For RedHat, Fedora or Centos users:

Before you can compile, ensure the following development packages are installed:

• zlib-devel
  
• libjpeg-devel
  
• giflib-devel
  
• freetype-devel
  
• gcc
  
• gcc-c++
  
• make
  

Download and install these packages using the command:

yum install zlib-devel libjpeg-devel giflib-devel freetype-devel gcc gcc-c++ make

If you have a Red Hat Linux version older than 2008-11-12-0905, you may see a message that states your operating system is unknown. If this is the case, use the following setting at configuration time:

./configure --build=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu

For Ubuntu users:

Just install the swftools package: sudo apt-get install swftools

If you're using the latest Ubuntu, and/or the swftools package does not exist, then you may need to compile and build from scratch ... for example, refer to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SWFTools. Here's an example of steps used for Ubuntu 11.10 (GNU/Linux 3.0.0-12-virtual x86_64) although YMMV (your mileage may vary) :

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gcc g++ make
sudo apt-get install libgif-dev xpdf  libfreetype6 libfreetype6-dev libjpeg62 libjpeg8 libjpeg8-dev

sudo apt-get install git

cd ~

git clone git://git.swftools.org/swftools

cd ~/swftools/lib/pdf

sudo perl inject-xpdf.pl xpdf-3.02.tar.gz

cd ~/swftools

./configure

make (hmm ... if permission issue, may need to: sudo make)

sudo make install

which pdf2swf

pdf2swf --version