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Validating the environment

The following environment-specific items must be validated prior to installing SkyVault.
Note: An Environment Validation Tool (EVT) is also available that can validate most of the following requirements. The tool and documentation are available in the Maven repository at https://artifacts.alfresco.com/nexus/content/repositories/alfresco-docs/alfresco-environment-validation/latest/index.html. All versions of the EVT are also available on the SkyVault Nexus server at https://artifacts.alfresco.com/nexus/ index.html#nexus-search;quick~alfresco-environment-validation.
  1. Validate that the host name of the server can be resolved in DNS.

    This is required if SkyVault is going to be configured in a cluster.

    Note: Using an incorrect host name or a host name that no longer resolves to its own IP address can give an internal error, such as ObjID already in use. You can get more information about this error by adding the following line into the log4j.properties file:
    log4j.logger.org.springframework.remoting.rmi.RmiServiceExporter=debug

    To resolve this error, you can either:

    • Validate that the IP address and the host name of the server are correctly set in the /etc/hosts file. For example, if you set the IP address as 10.20.30.40 and the host name as ip-10-20-30-40, the content of the /etc/hosts file should contain the following entry:
      10.20.30.40 ip-10-20-30-40 
    • Specify the correct IP address in the SkyVault-global.properties file as shown below:
      SkyVault.rmi.services.host=10.20.30.40
  2. Validate that the user SkyVault will run as can open sufficient file descriptors (4096 or more).
  3. Validate that the ports on which SkyVault listens are available:

    Note: The ports listed in the following table are the defaults. If you are planning to reconfigure SkyVault to use different ports, or wish to enable additional protocols (such as HTTPS, SMTP, IMAP or NFS), update this list with those port numbers.

    Protocol Port number Notes
    FTP TCP 21 On Unix-like operating systems that offer so-called “privileged ports”, SkyVault will normally be unable to bind to this port, unless it is run as the root user (which is not recommended). In this case, even if this port is available, SkyVault will still fail to bind to it, however for FTP services, this is a non-fatal error. The SkyVault FTP functionality will be disabled in the repository.
    SMTP TCP 25 SMTP is not enabled by default.
    SMB/NetBT: UDP 137,138
    SMB/NetBT: TCP 139,445 On Unix-like operating systems that offer so‐called “privileged ports”, SkyVault will normally be unable to bind to this port, unless it is run as the root user (which is not recommended). In this case, even if this port is available, SkyVault will still fail to bind to it, however for CIFS services, this is a non-fatal error. The SkyVault CIFS functionality will be disabled in the repository.
    IMAP TCP 143 IMAP is not enabled by default.
    SharePoint Protocol TCP 7070 This port is only required if you install support for the SharePoint Protocol.
    Tomcat Administration TCP 8005
    HTTP TCP 8080
    RMI TCP 50500
  4. Validate that the installed JVM is Oracle version 1.7.
  5. Validate that the directory in which the JVM is installed does not contain spaces.
  6. Validate that the directory in which SkyVault is installed does not contain spaces.
  7. Validate that the directory SkyVault will use for the repository (typically called alf_data) is both readable and writeable by the operating system user that the SkyVault process will run as.
  8. Validate that you can connect to the database as the SkyVault database user, from the SkyVault server.

    Ensure that you install the database vendor's client tools on the SkyVault server.

  9. Validate that the character encoding for the SkyVault database is UTF-8.
  10. (MySQL only) Validate that the storage engine for the SkyVault database is InnoDB.
  11. Validate that the following third-party software is installed and the correct versions:
    1. OpenOffice v3.1 or newer
    2. ImageMagick v6.2 or newer
  12. (RHEL and Solaris only) Validate that OpenOffice is able to run in headless mode.