Installing the Tomcat application server

See the Supported platforms page for the supported versions.

1. Create the directories required for an Alfresco Content Services installation under <TOMCAT_HOME>:
   • Create the shared/classes directory.
   • Create the shared/lib directory.
2. Open the <TOMCAT_HOME>/conf/catalina.properties file.
3. Change the value of the shared.loader= property to the following:

   shared.loader=${catalina.base}/shared/classes,${catalina.base}/shared/lib/*.jar

By default, Tomcat uses an 8 KB header buffer size, which might not be large enough for the Kerberos authentication protocol. We need to increase this buffer size. To make this change, edit the <TOMCAT_HOME>/conf/server.xml file and change the <Connector> defined for HTTP traffic as follows:

<Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
    URIEncoding="UTF-8"
    connectionTimeout="20000"
    maxHttpHeaderSize="32768"
    redirectPort="8443" />

You might want to connect from your front end load balancer with a different protocol, like AJP, or you might want to terminate TLS directly in Tomcat.

In these cases, you need to add additional connectors to Tomcat. Follow the official Tomcat documentation for these use cases, and make sure to increase the maxHttpHeaderSize on these additional Connectors as well (in case you plan to use Kerberos).

The Alfresco Content Services repository allows you to provide extensions outside of the web application, known as simple JAR modules. If you want to enable this mechanism, follow these steps:

1. Create the following directories under <TOMCAT_HOME>:
   1. modules/platform
   2. modules/share
2. Copy the files alfresco.xml and share.xml from the distribution zip /web-server/conf/Catalina/localhost to <TOMCAT_HOME>/conf/Catalina/localhost (or hostname).

The communication with Solr is encrypted and authenticated via mutual TLS. For this connection, you need an additional Connector.

1. Open the <TOMCAT_HOME>/conf/server.xml file.
2. Add the following Connector:

   <Connector port="8443" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol"

       SSLEnabled="true" maxThreads="150" scheme="https"

       keystoreFile="xxxxx"

       keystorePass="password" keystoreType="JCEKS" 
       secure="true" connectionTimeout="240000"

       truststoreFile="xxxxx"

       truststorePass="password" truststoreType="JCEKS" 
       clientAuth="want" sslProtocol="TLS" />

   Note: The keystore and truststore file locations in the above example will be created later, when you install and configure Alfresco Search Services.
   Note: If you're using a different keystore or truststore type other than the default, JCEKS, you must change the value in the properties file.