Use portal 6 with app server of your choice

Liferay portal can be deployed to many app servers. Cool thing is that from version 6 there are ant targets for downloading and preparing app server of your choice.

 

(1) Download and prepare app server

Invoke in portals folder:

ant -f build-dist.xml unzip-xxx

where xxx stands for name of your server, e.g.: tomcat, geronimo, jetty.... For full list of available unzipping targets, invoke:

a -f build-dist.xml -p


Server will be downloaded and unpacked to ../bundles folder.

 

2) Enable app server in build environment

Create/edit file app.server.<user_name>.properties (replace user-name with your os profile name). Note that this file is not under version control. Specify the app server name by setting the app.server.type property, e.g.:

app.server.type=tomcat

Take a peek in app.server.properties file (and do not modify it!) for possible server values. They should be the same as in previous step.

 

3) Deploy

Now when the build enviroment is set, invoking ant deploy and ant all will work with your app server.

 

[Eric Grandjean]

hi is it possible to use tomcat 5.5 as application server ?

[Igor Spasić]

afaik, portal v6 works with tomcat 6 and will not work 'out-of-box' with previous version of tomcat. However, portal v5.1 works with tomcat 5.

just wonder, is there any reason why would you insist on tomcat 5.5?

[Eric Grandjean]

we finally use tomcat 6.0.26

[Igor Spasić]

Cool ! Just note there is also Tomcat 6.0.29 and the last releases of portal use that one.

[T FoX]

Why are the big application servers not supported, like Weblogic or WebSphere?

[Igor Spasić]

ant -f build-dest.xml (described in the blog post) is designed for preparing distribution releases of the Liferay portal. You don't have Weblogic or WebSphere because we don't distribute prebundled packages with them, since they are commercial and not open source.

However, please take a look at:
http://www.liferay.com/products/liferay-portal/tech-specs
for a list of deployment options. You will find both Websphere and Weblogic ;)

[Igor Spasić]

And not to forget the administration guide provides instructions on how to install on the other servers.