questions on updating from Corra 1.0 to Corra 3.1

[DougB]

I've inherited a system running Corrav.1.0. I'm preparing to update
to v3.1. I'm new to administering webapps. As I've read through the
'CorraInstallationGuide.doc' the following questions have come up.

1. There are several references to 'the user running Tomcat' in the
notes. When I'm running a session of our current version of Corra via
a browser I can find no evidence of a user running Tomcat on the
server that hosts the webapp. The 'corra' user is associated with
the 'java' process. Tomcat does not show as a process. Who is the
'user running Tomcat'? How can I check that the 'user running Tomcat'
has the required permissions in the various app related
directories?

2. It appears that v.3 can use the same output and data locations as v.
1. Only the bin location will have to be updated to point to the new
executables. Is this assessment correct?

3. In section E.2 of the InstallationGuide, it says, '... when you are
installing as newly created "corra" user' . If I'm logged into the
host server under my own user account and run the deploy_corra.sh
script, does it run under the user id of the 'corra' user? Since the
'corra' user already exists on our host, will this cause any
problems?

Any other guidance on updating from someone who has been through it
would be appreciated.

thanks,

Doug

[Tommy Tran]

Hi Doug,

When you are upgrading Corra, you can use your old build.properties
and corra_webapps.properties file in the conf folder from the old
version to set up your new version. This will help so that you don't
use different settings and directory locations.

1. The user running tomcat is just a user that starts up the tomcat
server. Usually this is a user with admin rights. As long as the corra
user has access to the tomcat directory it should work. This is done
by having the tomcat directory's group and owner to be the user with
the admin rights and corra user to be in the same group. The way we
have it set up is we have a user named 'tomcat' that owns the tomcat
directory. There is also a group name 'tomcatgroup' that the user
'tomcat' is in and the directory group is also 'tomcatgroup'. We also
have a 'corra' user that is part of the 'tomcatgroup' group so that
the 'corra' user has access to it.

2. The bin location is not hard coded and can be changed to wherever
you want. You can find where the location is set at in the
build.properties file in the conf folder. You can look at your old
build.properties to see where it was before and set the new location
to be the same.

3. Yes, you can run the deploy_corra.sh script under your user name
and it should be fine.

Regards,
Tommy

[DougB]

Hi Tommy -

The build has completed successfully but I'm still having trouble
accessing the Corra app. Probably a permissions issue.

In your #1. you say the corra user should have access to the tomcat
directory. When I look for tomcat related directories I find:

[root@oscar_server ~]# find / -maxdepth 4 -name tomcat6

/usr/local/tomcat6
/usr/sbin/tomcat6
/usr/share/tomcat6
/usr/share/java/tomcat6
/etc/tomcat6
/etc/sysconfig/tomcat6
/etc/rc.d/init.d/tomcat6
/etc/logrotate.d/tomcat6
/var/lock/subsys/tomcat6
/var/cache/tomcat6
/var/log/tomcat6
/var/lib/tomcat6

Which is the tomcat directory you are referring to?

There is the webapps directory under /usr/local/tomcat6 and /etc/
tomcat6 appears to have tomcat configuration files.

Can you also clarify what you mean by a 'user with admin rights'?
Does this mean a user with read, write, execute rights in a directory
or something more formal, i.e. a user who is a member of th 'adm'
group?

Thanks for your help. Looking forward to running the upgraded
version.

-Doug