Redback configuration issues and properties

[Wilfried van Asten <wa...@iapc.utwente.nl>]

Hello Archiva Developers,

I have set up an Archiva instance on CentOS 6 with Tomcat 6.0.24. Now
I want to set up authentication through ldap. I am aware of the
instructions on
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ARCHIVA/HOWTO+configure+usermanagement+with+LDAP
and am following these instructions, but I am wondering why these
files are in such an unfortunate location. I would rather have this in
a more instance specific location. The reason is this: Tomcat deploys
the archiva web application into the /var/cache/tomcat6/work
directory. So to edit the application.xml file I would have to edit it
in that location. This location should in my opinion be considered
temporary. If for instance I update the Archiva war file this file
would be overriden and I would have to change it again. On the other
hand changes to Archiva might affect this file and not overwriting it
with the new version could break Archiva.

It seems to me that at this moment "Redback configuration" is
something different from "Archiva configuration" and these systems
should be brought closer together. At the very least "Redback
configuration" should be moved out of the war file.

In an unrelated matter the choice of user.home as the location for the
Archiva configuration file and ${appserver.base}/data for repositories
caused some problems with the CentOS tomcat user not having a writable
home and the tomcat base not being writable. I would like to be able
to control the repositories location through a different property
rather than appserver.base which is fine if the distribution is
standalone, but more problematic in this case. I was okay with the
logs located in the same location as the tomcat log file but the
repositories are an entirely different matter. It seems to me that
when using the war file in an application server these things are
better controlled through context parameters. Even for the standalone
version with jetty this would work and is in my opinion appropriate.

Well these were my first experiences with/opinions on setting up
Archiva and although I do not know enough about Redback or Archiva to
be able to say if the things I suggested are possible I do hope you
will take them into consideration,

Kind regards,

Wilfried van Asten

Re: Redback configuration issues and properties

[Olivier Lamy <ol...@apache.org>]

Hello,

2011/12/27 Wilfried van Asten <wa...@iapc.utwente.nl>:
> Hello Archiva Developers,
>
> I have set up an Archiva instance on CentOS 6 with Tomcat 6.0.24. Now
> I want to set up authentication through ldap. I am aware of the
> instructions on
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ARCHIVA/HOWTO+configure+usermanagement+with+LDAP
> and am following these instructions, but I am wondering why these
> files are in such an unfortunate location. I would rather have this in
> a more instance specific location. The reason is this: Tomcat deploys
> the archiva web application into the /var/cache/tomcat6/work
> directory. So to edit the application.xml file I would have to edit it
> in that location. This location should in my opinion be considered
> temporary. If for instance I update the Archiva war file this file
> would be overriden and I would have to change it again. On the other
> hand changes to Archiva might affect this file and not overwriting it
> with the new version could break Archiva.
>
> It seems to me that at this moment "Redback configuration" is
> something different from "Archiva configuration" and these systems
> should be brought closer together. At the very least "Redback
> configuration" should be moved out of the war file.
>
> In an unrelated matter the choice of user.home as the location for the
> Archiva configuration file and ${appserver.base}/data for repositories

You are able to have archiva.xml in ${appserver.base}/conf/ .
That should work.

> caused some problems with the CentOS tomcat user not having a writable
> home and the tomcat base not being writable. I would like to be able
> to control the repositories location through a different property
> rather than appserver.base which is fine if the distribution is
> standalone, but more problematic in this case. I was okay with the
> logs located in the same location as the tomcat log file but the
> repositories are an entirely different matter. It seems to me that
> when using the war file in an application server these things are
> better controlled through context parameters. Even for the standalone
> version with jetty this would work and is in my opinion appropriate.
>
> Well these were my first experiences with/opinions on setting up
> Archiva and although I do not know enough about Redback or Archiva to
> be able to say if the things I suggested are possible I do hope you
> will take them into consideration,
I cannot agree more on that.
Some ui mechanism to configure will be better.
We only need some time to do it or help :-) .
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Wilfried van Asten



-- 
Olivier Lamy
Talend: http://coders.talend.com
http://twitter.com/olamy | http://linkedin.com/in/olamy