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.

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.

You can later remove the service with:

.\bin\archiva.bat remove

Separating the base from the installation

The standalone instance of Archiva uses the Plexus application server, which is capable of separating it's configuration from installation, in much the same way Tomcat does for example.

This is achieved by the following steps:

1. Creating the base location. For example, you might install Archiva in /opt/archiva-1.0 and the data in /var/archiva. Create the directories /var/archiva/logs, /var/archiva/data and /var/archiva/conf.
2. Copy the configuration files from the Archiva installation (eg /opt/archiva-1.0/conf to the new location (eg. /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. Set the environment variable ARCHIVA_BASE to the data location (eg. /var/archiva). In bash, be sure to export the variable.
4. Start Archiva standalone as described above from the installation location

Configuring Archiva

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

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

When Archiva saves it's configuration, all configuration is stored to 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/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.

  ...
  <!-- Archiva Database -->

  <New id="archiva" class="org.mortbay.jetty.plus.naming.Resource">
    <Arg>jdbc/archiva</Arg>
    <Arg>
      <New class="com.mysql.jdbc.jdbc2.optional.MysqlDataSource">
        <Set name="serverName">localhost</Set>
        <Set name="databaseName">archiva</Set>
        <Set name="user">archiva</Set>
        <Set name="password">sa</Set>
      </New>
    </Arg>
  </New>

  <New id="archivaShutdown" class="org.mortbay.jetty.plus.naming.Resource">
    <Arg>jdbc/archivaShutdown</Arg>
    <Arg>
      <New class="com.mysql.jdbc.jdbc2.optional.MysqlDataSource">
        <Set name="serverName">localhost</Set>
        <Set name="databaseName">archiva</Set>
        <Set name="user">archiva</Set>
        <Set name="password">sa</Set>
      </New>
    </Arg>
  </New>

  <!-- Users / Security Database -->

  <New id="users" class="org.mortbay.jetty.plus.naming.Resource">
    <Arg>jdbc/users</Arg>
    <Arg>
      <New class="com.mysql.jdbc.jdbc2.optional.MysqlDataSource">
        <Set name="serverName">localhost</Set>
        <Set name="databaseName">redback</Set>
        <Set name="user">archiva</Set>
        <Set name="password">sa</Set>
      </New>
    </Arg>
  </New>

  <New id="usersShutdown" class="org.mortbay.jetty.plus.naming.Resource">
    <Arg>jdbc/usersShutdown</Arg>
    <Arg>
      <New class="com.mysql.jdbc.jdbc2.optional.MysqlDataSource">
        <Set name="url">jdbc:mysql://localhost/redback</Set>
        <Set name="user">archiva</Set>
        <Set name="password">sa</Set>
      </New>
    </Arg>
  </New>
  ...

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