Slide Installation

There are two methods of installing Slide - using the handy Tomcat bundle (simple) or deploying Slide into an existing application server (mildly painful). Use the bundle method when you don't already have an app server (Tomcat, Jetty, JBoss, whatever) handy. Only use the second approach if you know what you're doing re Java app servers or are willing to learn.

Note: There is a known issue with Slide deployed in Tomcat on all platforms in which the webapp does not seem to shut down cleanly. When you stop Tomcat, the java process does not exit, so you have to kill it manually. See the bug report for more information.

Tomcat bundle

Download the Tomcat 5 bundle binary release. Reasonable instructions can be found at http://jakarta.apache.org/slide/installation.html. It should be a straightforward process. If you already have something listening on ports 8009 and/or 8080, then you'll need to edit $CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml, change those ports, and restart Tomcat. If you aren't familiar with Tomcat, find the manual at http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-5.0-doc/.

Existing Tomcat installation

These are the steps needed to install Slide into an existing Tomcat installation and configure security using JAAS for authentication. If you bother trying it with another app server, please add your notes here.

1. Download the latest server binary release (not the Tomcat bundled release) and unpack.
2. Copy slide/webapp/slide.war into $CATALINA_HOME/webapps and expand (cd $CATALINA_HOME/webapps; jar xvf slide.war).
3. Uncomment security sections in $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/slide/WEB-INF/web.xml.
4. Add context config file slide.xml in $CATALINA_HOME/conf/Catalina/localhost.
5. export CATALINA_OPTS=-Djava.security.auth.login.config=$CATALINA_HOME/conf/jaas.config for the user that runs Tomcat
6. Add jaas.config in $CATALINA_HOME/conf.
7. Use cadaver or another WebDAV client to test access by opening http://localhost:8080/slide/. You should be challenged for a username and password; enter root / root.

Sample =slide.xml

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>

<Context path="/slide" debug="0" privileged="true" useNaming="true">
  <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.JAASRealm"
         appName="slide_login"
         userClassNames="org.apache.slide.jaas.spi.SlidePrincipal"
         roleClassNames="org.apache.slide.jaas.spi.SlideRole"
         debug="99"
         useContextClassLoader="false"/>
</Context>

Sample =jaas.config

slide_login {
org.apache.slide.jaas.spi.SlideLoginModule required
namespace=slide;
};

-- BrianMoseley - 22 Feb 2005