Version 11

These instructions are written assuming configuration will be in the local.properties file. However, this isn't the only place that configuration options can be configured.

Configuration Files

Configuration options can be specified in a number of different ways. These take precedence in the following order:

1. Java System properties – set using the -D propertyName=value on the java command line / tomcat launch configuration

2. webapps/<phixflow>/WEB-INF/classes/local.properties – optional java properties file

3. webapps/<phixflow>/WEB-INF/classes/phixflow.properties – optional java properties file

4. Environment variables – using the environment form of the property name as described below

5. webapps/<phixflow>/WEB-INF/classes/context/server.properties – this contains the default values and should not be modified

In other words

• a setting in phixflow.properties takes precedence over a setting for that same property in server.properties

• a setting in local.properties takes precedence over a setting for that same property in either or both server.properties or phixflow.properties

Keystore Files

Optionally, secrets, such as database passwords, can be kept encrypted in external secret files. Refer to Configure a Keystore and Aliases for instructions on how to configure this before proceeding with the installation.

Environment Form of Property Names

As operating systems have stricter rules around valid characters in environment variable names, and prefer them to be in upper case, when using environment variables the property name should be converted as follows:

• Replace dots (.) with underscores (_)

• Remove any dashes (-)

• Convert to uppercase

For example, “db.url” would be looked up as “DB_URL” when resolved from environment variables.

Guidelines and Advice for Configuration

• The context/server.properties file should never be changed. This is replaced on upgrade.

• For a multi-instance environment (e.g. DEV, QA and Prod) it is recommended that a common phixflow.properties file is used on all instances, containing configuration settings that are identical on all environments. The local.properties file is then used for local overrides, such as database url and passwords.

• For single instance environments it is recommended that you use only the local.properties file.

• Only properties that have differing values from the default settings in the server.properties should be configured. This makes it easier to review and manage the configuration and ensures that fixes and improvements to the default settings will be applied automatically.

• In docker environments it may be beneficial to use environment variables rather than settings in the local.properties file. This allows the same container image to be started as multiple instances with different configurations.

Step 1 Shutdown Tomcat

If Tomcat is currently running then shut it down before proceeding with the following steps.

Step 2 Copy the PhixFlow Webapp into Tomcat

To install the PhixFlow web application into Tomcat:

Copy $RELEASE/webapps/phixflow to $TOMCAT/webapps/phixflow

Linux

Make sure that the file ownership is set correctly for the installed webapp(s):

sudo chown -R tomcat:tomcat $TOMCAT/webapps/phixflow

Step 3  Create Configuration Files

Copy the following example configuration files and, where required, update them for your system.

1. Make a copy of local.example.properties and rename it to local.properties
2. Make a copy of logback.phixflow.xml.example and rename it to logback.phixflow.xml

Step 4 Create PhixFlow File System

• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/upload
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/temp
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/import
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/export
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/datalink
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/templates
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/archive
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/driverFiles
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/download

Create the soft-link in a CMD or Powershell session:

mklink /D C:\app\tomcat\webapps\$WEBAPP\datalink C:\app\phixflow\data\$WEBAPP\datalink

export WEBAPP=[webapp name, e.g. phixflow]
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/upload
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/temp
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/import
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/export
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/datalink
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/templates
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/archive
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/driverFiles
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/download
sudo chown -R tomcat:tomcat /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP
cd /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP; sudo chmod g+w upload temp export datalink
sudo ln -sf /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/datalink /opt/tomcat/webapps/$WEBAPP/datalink

Step 5 Configure Essential Properties

Refer to Server Configuration Properties for the full list of available configuration properties. Refer to Configure a Keystore and Aliases if a keystore is being used.

The recommended minimum for a basic install in the local.properties file is as follows. This will create a new user called admin. The password will be autogenerated and written to the security.log file. It is strongly recommended that this password is changed immediately after installation.

install.customer_name=<your customer name as provided with your licence>
install_licence_key=<Licence key as provided with your licence>
install.data.base=<C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP, /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP, or other selected directory>
db.url=<database jdbc url>
phixflow-database-user=<database username>
phixflow-database-password=<database password>

The configuration settings are show below:

Database Connection Configuration

These are the basic settings to enable connection to the Phixflow database.

Step 6  Restart Tomcat

Whenever you make changes in $TOMCAT/webapps/phixflow, remember to restart Tomcat, so that the changes are used.

Linux

If you have followed PhixFlow's recommended installation for PhixFlow, you can use the commands:

sudo systemctl stop tomcat
sudo systemctl start tomcat

Either do Minimum Set-up After Installation on page Administration, or instruct the people you are delivering this to to complete these steps immediately

Multiple PhixFlow Webapps

To install multiple instances of PhixFlow on a single server, complete the installation steps above to create a first PhixFlow instance. Then install a further instance:

1. Create a second database user to hold the data for the new instance.
2. Copy the PhixFlow web application into the Tomcat again:

cp $RELEASE/webapps/phixflow to $TOMCAT/webapps/<mywebapp>

where <mywebapp> is the name of your new instance.

Remember to set up a separate user and schema in the database for the new PhixFlow instance and to configure phixflow-datasource.xml with the user, password and connection-string.

Renaming the Log File

By default, the settings in logback.xml send log messages from all PhixFlow webapps to the same log file, phixflow.log. When you have multiple instances, it is then not clear which webapp has generated which messages. In this case, we recommend that you change each webapp to log into a separate log file.

For each webapp, edit the local.properties file and set the change the name of the log file to something that uniquely identifies which webapp it has been generated by - we recommend phixflow_webappName.log (where webappName should be changed to the name of the webapp). This can be configured by setting logging.file.phixflow.base=phixflow_webappName

Version 10

Step-1  Copy the PhixFlow Webapp into Tomcat

To install the PhixFlow web application into Tomcat:

Copy $RELEASE/webapps/phixflow to $TOMCAT/webapps/phixflow

Linux

Make sure that the file ownership is set correctly for the installed webapps:

sudo chown -R tomcat:tomcat $TOMCAT/webapps/phixflow

Step-2  Create Configuration Files

Copy the following example configuration files and, where required, update them for your system.

phixflow-instance.xml

Copy the example file phixflow-instance.xml.example to phixflow-instance.xml.

phixflow-instance.xml identifies the webapp instance in a resilient configuration and sets whether the instance is active on startup.

phixflow-datasource.xml

The PhixFlow webapp must be configured to provide user access to the PhixFlow database. In phixflow-datasource.xml, enter an alias username and password. The actual username and password are stored in an encrypted keystore; see Configure a Keystore and Aliases.

1. Copy phixflow-datasource.xml.<database>.example to phixflow-datasource.xml.
2. Edit the properties for <bean id="dataSource"...  (shown below).
3. Enter the alias for the database:
   • username
   • and password.

<property name="url">
	<value>CONNECTION-STRING</value>
</property>
<property name="username">
	<value>ALIAS-USERNAME</value>
</property>
<property name="password">
	<value>ALIAS-PASSWORD</value>
</property>

4. Replace the temporary values with:

• USERNAME: the database user's name.
• PASSWORD: the database user's password.
• CONNECTION-STRING: this depends on the database platform, and is one of: 

Oracle:  jdbc:oracle:thin:@hostname:1521:phixflow

Oracle (> 12c with PDB containers):   jdbc:oracle:thin:@hostname:1521/phixflow

SQL Server:   jdbc:sqlserver://hostname\myservice;databaseName=phixflow;sendStringParametersAsUnicode=false

MySQL:  jdbc:mysql://localhost/phixflow?defaultFetchSize=2000

These strings cover most cases of connecting to PhixFlow's own database. For information about how connection strings are constructed for the various database platforms supported by PhixFlow; see Database URLs.

phixflow-secret.xml

If you have not already done so Configure a Keystore and Aliases. Use phixflow-secret.xml to specify the keystore details.

phixflow-login.xml

Copy the example file phixflow-login.xml.example to phixflow-login.xml.

You will use this file if you need to configure PhixFlow to authenticate users’ usernames and passwords against an external domain, or Active Directory, or a SAML Single Sign-on server, such as the Active Directory Federation Services server. For more information, see the pages in the User Administration topic.

logback.xml 

Copy the example file logback.xml.example to logback.xml.

The logback.xml file controls detailed event/error logging on the server. You only need to change this file:

• to rename the log file if you have multiple PhixFlow instances; see Renaming the Log File, below.
• to change the logging level when troubleshooting; see Server Log Files
• to update the standard retention setting for PhixFlow generated log files; the default is 30 days. See PhixFlow log retention settings
• as requested by PhixFlow Support.

phixflow-logging.xml 

Copy the example file phixflow-logging.xml.example to phixflow-logging.xml.

The phixflow-logging.xml file contains a list of directories that contain log files, and is used when downloading log files from the GUI. You only need to change this file as requested by PhixFlow Support.

Using Your own Logo in PhixFlow

Optionally, you can configure PhixFlow to display your own company logo. The logo must be a vector graphic .svg file with the name customerLogo.svg (case sensitive). Add the file to  $TOMCAT/webapps/phixflow/gui/images/

Step-3  Restart Tomcat

Whenever you make changes in $TOMCAT/webapps/phixflow, remember to restart Tomcat, so that the changes are used.

Linux

If you have followed PhixFlow's recommended installation for PhixFlow, you can use the commands:

sudo systemctl stop tomcat
sudo systemctl start tomcat

Create PhixFlow File System

• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/upload
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/temp
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/import
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/export
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/datalink
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/templates
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/archive
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/driverFiles
• C:/app/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/download

Create the soft-link in a CMD or Powershell session:

mklink /D C:\app\tomcat\webapps\$WEBAPP\datalink C:\app\phixflow\data\$WEBAPP\datalink

export WEBAPP=[webapp name, e.g. phixflow]
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/upload
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/temp
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/import
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/export
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/datalink
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/templates
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/archive
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/driverFiles
sudo mkdir /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/download
sudo chown -R tomcat:tomcat /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP
cd /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP; sudo chmod g+w upload temp export datalink
sudo ln -sf /opt/phixflow/data/$WEBAPP/datalink /opt/tomcat/webapps/$WEBAPP/datalink

Either do Minimum Set-up After Installation on page Administration, or instruct the people you are delivering this to to complete these steps immediately

Multiple PhixFlow Webapps

To install multiple instances of PhixFlow on a single server, complete the installation steps above to create a first PhixFlow instance. Then install a further instance:

1. Create a second database user to hold the data for the new instance.
2. Copy the PhixFlow web application into the Tomcat again:

cp $RELEASE/webapps/phixflow to $TOMCAT/webapps/<mywebapp>

where <mywebapp> is the name of your new instance.

Remember to set up a separate user and schema in the database for the new PhixFlow instance and to configure phixflow-datasource.xml with the user, password and connection-string.

Renaming the Log File

By default, the settings in logback.xml send log messages from all PhixFlow webapps to the same log file, phixflow.log. When you have multiple instances, it is then not clear which webapp has generated which messages. In this case, we recommend that you change each webapp to log into a separate log file.

For each webapp, edit the logback.xml file and change the name of the log file to something that uniquely identifies which webapp it has been generated by - we recommend phixflow_webappName.log (where webappName should be changed to the name of the webapp). This needs to be added in two places:

• on line 3: messages are re-directed initially to logs/phixflow_webappName.log
• on line 6: messages re-directed after daily rollover to logs/phixflow_webappName.yyyy-MM-dd.log.

... 
 <appender name="FILE" class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.RollingFileAppender">
    <file>logs/phixflow_webappName.log</file>
    <rollingPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.TimeBasedRollingPolicy">        
      <!-- daily rollover -->
      <fileNamePattern>logs/phixflow_webappName.%d{yyyy-MM-dd}.log</fileNamePattern>
      <maxHistory>30</maxHistory>
    </rollingPolicy>
    <encoder>
      <pattern>%date %level [%thread] %logger{10} [%file:%line] %msg%n</pattern>
    </encoder>
  </appender>
...