Install Apache Roller 4 with Tomcat on CentOS

This post will cover installing Apache Roller 4.0.1 on CentOS with Tomcat and MySQL.

4.0.1 is the current GA production release of Apache Roller.

For this post, you will need a working installation of Tomcat. If you do not have Tomcat installed, you can install it using our Tomcat step-by-step guide here.

What you will need to download:

apache-roller-4.0.1.zipJavaMail 1.4.4mysql-connector-java-5.1.15-bin.jar I'll be saving the above file to my /opt directory.



We'll call our database 'roller'

[root@srv6 opt]# mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 2694
Server version: 5.0.77 Source distribution

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> create database roller;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> grant all on roller.* to myuser@localhost identified by 'secret';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql>

From our downloads, we'll need to copy the mail.jar and mysql-connector-java-5.1.15-bin.jar to our Tomcat/lib Directory

Unzip javamail1_4_4.zip

[root@srv6 opt]# unzip -q javamail1_4_4.zip

Change to the javamail-1.4.4 directory and copy mail.jar to the Tomcat lib directory:

[root@srv6 opt]# cd javamail-1.4.4
[root@srv6 javamail-1.4.4]# cp mail.jar /usr/share/apache-tomcat-6.0.30/lib/mail.jar

Change back to the /opt directory and unpack mysql-connector-java-5.1.15.tar.gz

[root@srv6 javamail-1.4.4]# cd /opt
[root@srv6 opt]# tar -xvf mysql-connector-java-5.1.15.tar.gz

Change to the mysql-connector-java-5.1.15 directory and copy mysql-connector-java-5.1.15-bin.jar to the Tomcat lib directory:

[root@srv6 opt]# cd mysql-connector-java-5.1.15
[root@srv6 mysql-connector-java-5.1.15]# cp mysql-connector-java-5.1.15-bin.jar /usr/share/apache-tomcat-6.0.30/lib/mysql-connector-java-5.1.15-bin.jar

We'll now create our roller-custom.properties file in the Tomcat/lib directory

[root@srv6 mysql-connector-java-5.1.15]#  cd /usr/share/apache-tomcat-6.0.30/lib
[root@srv6 lib]# vi roller-custom.properties

The file should contain the following. Replace database, user and password with your own. If required enter the mail user credentials as well.

installation.type=auto
database.configurationType=jdbc
database.jdbc.driverClass=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
database.jdbc.connectionURL=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/roller
database.jdbc.username=myuser
database.jdbc.password=secret
mail.configurationType=properties
mail.hostName=localhost
#mail.username=
#mail.password=

We now need to build the roller.war file from our Roller download.

Unzip apache-roller-4.0.1.zip

[root@srv6 opt]# unzip -q apache-roller-4.0.1.zip

Change to the apache-roller-4.0.1/webapp/roller directory

[root@srv6 opt]# cd apache-roller-4.0.1/webapp/roller

Create the WAR file

[root@srv6 roller]# % jar cvf ../roller.war *

The roller.war file is created apache-roller-4.0.1/webapp directory. Copy the WAR to your Tomcat/webapps directory

[root@srv6 webapp]# cp roller.war /usr/share/apache-tomcat-6.0.30/webapps/roller.war

Start up Tomcat to load your new files and jars.

[root@srv6 webapp]# service tomcat start
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /usr/share/apache-tomcat-6.0.30
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /usr/share/apache-tomcat-6.0.30
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /usr/share/apache-tomcat-6.0.30/temp
Using JRE_HOME:        /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_23
Using CLASSPATH:       /usr/share/apache-tomcat-6.0.30/bin/bootstrap.jar

If your installation was successful, you should now be able to go to http://YourIP:8080/roller or http://YourDomain:8080/roller

If you are not able to access Roller, check your catalina.out or roller.log files in your Tomcat/logs directory.

You should see a prompt to create the roller tables in MySQL.

Click the "Yes - Create Tables Now" button



On successful completion of creating the Roller tables in MySQL you will see the following:



Follow the prompt and click to complete the installation.



The Roller Front Page should now be displayed as below.



Click the 'New User Registration Link' to create your Global Admin user. As noted, the first user registered will have Global Admin rights.



http://roller.apache.org/