Installing Standalone Distribution of Apache Archiva

Installing the standalone distribution of Archiva is quite simple - for an example, see the Quick Start guide.

However, the best way to use this installation technique is to separate the configuration from the installation to make it easy to upgrade to newer versions in the future.

Running Archiva

Archiva can be run by executing:

  • bin/archiva, or bin\archiva.bat for Windows (select the one for your environment). The argument can be console to run interactively, or start to run in the background (in this case, run the script with stop to later stop the server). The logs are available in the logs directory where Archiva is installed.

There is an issue with regard to the version of tr installed/used by default on Solaris so you might encounter a series of Bad String errors when you run the Archiva binaries in Solaris. You need to use a different version of tr in order to get it to work. See MRM-1467 for more details.

NOTE: since 1.4-M3 Archiva is now available on / (ROOT) context.

If you want to use an other context path, you must edit the file in contexts/archiva.xml

<Configure class="org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext">

  <!-- contextPath used -->
  <Set name="contextPath">/</Set>
  <Set name="war"><SystemProperty name="jetty.home" default="."/>/apps/archiva</Set>

  <Set name="extractWAR">false</Set>
  <Set name="copyWebDir">false</Set>

</Configure>

Installing as a Service on Linux

On Linux, the bin/archiva script is suitable for linking or copying to /etc/init.d/archiva and running as root, as long as the RUN_AS_USER environment variable is set within the script. This will allow you to start and stop the service with:

$ service archiva start
$ service archiva stop

Starting on boot for RedHat-based systems

The startup script is enabled to chkconfig. Run the following as root:

$ chkconfig --add archiva
$ chkconfig archiva on

Starting on boot for Debian/Ubuntu-based systems

Debian-based systems come with a script to create appropriate rc.d links for a startup script:

$ update-rc.d archiva defaults 80

Installing as a Service on Windows

On Windows, to use the start and stop commands you must first install it as a service. This is done by running:

.\bin\archiva.bat install

You can then use the start and stop commands as well as the traditional Windows service management console to manage the Archiva service.

This procedure installs the service to run as the local system user. You must ensure that it has access to read the installation, and to write to the logs and data directories.

Note on last Windows version, you need to configure correctly path to your java executable. In wrapper.conf file:

wrapper.java.command=fullpath to your java executable

You can later remove the service with:

.\bin\archiva.bat remove

Installing as a Service on Mac OS X

On OS X, you can use launchd to run a service. Create the following as root in /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.archiva.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>org.apache.archiva</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Applications/Archiva/apache-archiva-2.2.0/bin/archiva</string>
        <string>console</string>
    </array>
    <key>Disabled</key>
    <false/>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>UserName</key>
    <string>archiva</string>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/Applications/Archiva/apache-archiva-2.2.0/logs/launchd.log</string>
    <!-- Optional - store data separate from installation (see below) -->
    <key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
    <dict>
      <key>ARCHIVA_BASE</key>
      <string>/Users/archiva/Library/Archiva</string>
    </dict>
    <!-- Optional: force it to keep running
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <true/>
    -->
</dict>
</plist>

To install the service, run the following:

$ sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.archiva.plist
$ sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.archiva.plist

Start and stop the service with:

$ sudo launchctl start org.apache.archiva.plist
$ sudo launchctl stop org.apache.archiva.plist

To uninstall the service:

$ sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.archiva.plist

Separating the base from the installation

The standalone installation of Archiva is capable of separating its configuration from installation in much the same way Tomcat does.

This is achieved by the following steps:

  1. Create the base location. For example, you might install Archiva in /opt/archiva-2.0 and the data in /var/archiva. Create the directories /var/archiva/logs, /var/archiva/data, /var/archiva/temp and /var/archiva/conf.
  2. Copy (move will fail) the configuration files from the Archiva installation (e.g. /opt/archiva-2.0/conf to the new location (e.g. /var/archiva/conf). If you've previously run Archiva, you may need to edit conf/archiva.xml to change the location of the repositories.
  3. (Optionally, leave a README file in the old conf location as a reminder of where you moved the config files.)
  4. Set the environment variable ARCHIVA_BASE to the new location (e.g. /var/archiva). In bash, be sure to export the variable.
  5. Start Archiva standalone as described above from the installation location

Configuring Archiva

Archiva's configuration is loaded from the following files, in order of precedence:

  • ~/.m2/archiva.xml
  • $ARCHIVA_BASE/conf/archiva.xml
  • conf/archiva.xml in the Archiva installation

When Archiva saves its configuration, all configuration is stored in a single file. The file chosen is by the following rules:

  • If ~/.m2/archiva.xml exists, it is saved there
  • Otherwise, if $ARCHIVA_BASE/conf/archiva.xml exists, it is saved there
  • If neither apply, it is saved to ~/.m2/archiva.xml.

The configuration will never be saved in the Archiva installation directory if you are using a separate base directory.

Note that the configuration can be edited, but only when Archiva is not running as it will not reload a changed configuration file, and will save over it if something is changed in the web interface.

Database

By default, Archiva uses embedded Apache Derby to store the user information. It can be configured to use an external database by providing a JDBC driver and editing the jetty.xml file.

  1. Place the jar containing the JDBC driver in the lib directory of the Archiva installation.
  2. Edit conf/wrapper.conf to add it in the jetty classpath
     Find lines with:
     wrapper.java.classpath.x=%REPO_DIR%/tomcat-juli-7.0.34.jar
    
     Add one
    
     wrapper.java.classpath.x+1=%REPO_DIR%/yourjdbcdriver.jar
    
  3. Edit conf/jetty.xml, providing the JDBC driver class name, database url, username, and password.

The example below uses Mysql for the database server. You can take a look at Archiva with MySQL for more details.

  <!-- omitted xml -->

  <!-- Users / Security Database -->

  <New id="users" class="org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jndi.Resource">
    <Arg>jdbc/users</Arg>
    <Arg>
      <New class="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSource">
        <Set name="driverClassName">com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</Set>
        <Set name="url">jdbc:mysql://localhost/archiva</Set>
        <Set name="username"></Set>
        <Set name="password"></Set>
        <Set name="initialSize">15</Set>
        <!-- depends on your concurrent users numbers -->
        <Set name="maxActive">30</Set>
        <Set name="maxWait">10000</Set>
        <Set name="removeAbandoned">true</Set>
        <Set name="logAbandoned">true</Set>
        <Set name="removeAbandonedTimeout">10000</Set>
        <Set name="testOnBorrow">true</Set>
        <!-- very rigourous sql query validation -->
        <Set name="validationQuery">select 1</Set>
      </New>
    </Arg>
  </New>
  <!-- omitted xml -->

More information about using Derby Network Server as an external user database for Archiva can be found on the wiki: Archiva User DB on Derby Network Server

Installing with Puppet

If you use Puppet to manage your infrastructure, you can use a third-party Puppet module to install Archiva. This will take care of adding the required users, databases and configuration based on official release tarballs.