How to setup activemq?

[Carsten Biemann]

Hi at all,

I had grant strides in installing matterhorn at our virtual server on Ubuntu. Quite a long story, but I did it. Now I'm trying to configure the "beast". ;-)

I am a bit confused about the section ActiveMQ, because I'm new in this kind of software. In the manual (https://docs.opencast.org/latest/admin/configuration/message-broker/) in the section "Create ActiveMQ Admin User" and "Create ActiveMQ Admin Group" you should create an entry in the file users.properties and groups.properties in the ActiveMQ config-directory.

Am I right, that this is NOT in /opt/opencast/etc but in /etc/activemq/instances-enabled/ (on Ubuntu) and I have to create these files?

Further on I have to create a third file login.config with the following content, right?

--

activemq {

    org.apache.activemq.jaas.PropertiesLoginModule required

    org.apache.activemq.jaas.properties.user="users.properties"

    org.apache.activemq.jaas.properties.group="groups.properties";

};

--

Thanks and greetings from Frankfurt

Carsten

[Lars Kiesow]

Hi Carsten,
I learned only yesterday that Ubuntu has updated their version of
ActiveMQ so that it now meets the version required for Opencast. That
is why the Docs will probably still addume that you use the binary
distribution which you would put in /opt. Hence, ignore the /opt path.

I cannot give you any hints about the users management since I never
use the ActiveMQ web ui.

–Lars

[Carsten Biemann]

Hi Lars,

thanks again for your help.

What does it meen, you never used ActiveMQ web ui? I don't want to use it either, because I'm not firm with it and Opencast is complex enough at the actual state for me.

I just followed the installation manual. Are there any other ways to bypass ActiveMQ?

The opt-path as you said did I already ignored, because here on my Ubuntu-Version the config is located in /etc/activemq/instances-enabled/ (see the initial post). But I'm confused with the instruction: Put this content in this file and so on. These files doesn't exist and I don't know where to put which configuration.

In the other case. Is there anyone who can explain me what I'm setting up there?

The configuration files are named as in Opencast, but it is a different Software (ActiveMQ). Or do I mixed up several things?

Maybe I can get behind this on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS by myself if I have analogous configs from your installation. @All: What did you do to setup ActiveMQ for Opencast on your distro?

👋 Carsten

[Dietmar Zenker]

Hi Carsten,

as an example, I've attached a ZIP of /etc/activemq from a local (and working...) Opencast 2.2 test VM. Though it's from a CentOS 7 system, this should also work with Ubuntu. The activemq.xml also contains the "jaasAuthentificationPlugin" configuration which is required for Opencast as described in the docu.

Hope that helps,

greetings from rainy Idstein,
Dietmar

[Carsten Biemann]

Danke Dietmar,

ich schaue es mir dann mal an und versuche es zu übertragen auf meine Installation.

Lieben Gruß

Carsten

[Oleg]

Hi Carsten,

if you installed activemq via apt-get on Ubuntu, the config structure is a bit different than the installation on other distros. In /etc/activemq you'll find the directory instaces-available/main... Just copy the activemq.xml into the folder instaces-available/main . Then activate the instance with the following command:

sudo ln -s /etc/activemq/instances-available/main /etc/activemq/instances-enabled/main

That should create a symlink to the instance, similary to vhost or mods for apache2. Once you start activemq, you can login on http://localhost:8161 by default. The default username is "admni", password also "admin". Once you're logged in, you can click on "Queues" in the upper bar... If you see things like "ACL.Adminui", "RECORDING.Adminui", "WORKFLOW.Adminui", etc then the activemq.xml has been found and is being used. Once you start Opencast, you can click on "Connections" in the upper bar of the ActiveMQ management UI and there you should see something. In my case there are two entries under "Connector openwire". That means that Opencast has been able to establish a connection.

If the above doesn't work, you could download the ActiveMQ binary manually, put the whole stuff for example under /opt/activemq . Follow the instructions on http://activemq.apache.org/version-5-getting-started.html . To be honest, despite using Ubuntu the manual installation is my preferred way to install ActiveMQ. I currently don't see any disadvantages of the manual approach except that you'll have to update ActiveMQ manually to a newer version, whereas the packed version would be updated by the package manager.

Kind regards

- Oleg

[Carsten Biemann]

Hi Oleg,

big thanks. That is a good instruction for me. I'll try this next week.

Greets

Carsten