How to install Alfresco 6 on Linux

Hello, I am Nicolas! So, you want to try Alfresco on Linux? Alfresco used to provide a user-friendly wizard installer, but starting from Alfresco 6 they only provide a Docker image. It is not much more complicated, if you follow the instructions below. I have tested on Ubuntu Linux 18.04 and 19.04, if the instructions are different for other distributions of Linux please write a comment, thanks!

Step 1: Install Docker

If you don't have Docker yet, install the package:

sudo apt install docker.io docker-compose

Then add your user to the docker group (replace "nico" with your username):

sudo usermod -aG docker nico

For this change to take effect, either log out and log in again, or just type this into your terminal, as your user:

newgrp docker

Step 2: Install Alfresco

If you don't have Git yet, install the package:

sudo apt install git

Then, as your normal Linux user, go to any folder that has 500 kilobytes of free space (yes that part is very small as it is a kind of installer rather Alfresco itself), for instance your home folder, and execute these commands one after the other:

git clone git@github.com:Alfresco/acs-community-deployment.git

cd acs-community-deployment/docker-compose

docker-compose up

That's it, your new Alfresco is now being downloaded and started! Go have a break.

Using your Alfresco 6

The Alfresco user interface (called Alfresco Share) is at http://localhost:8080/share

The CMIS and WebDAV URLs, as well as some administration tools such as the Node Browser and the WebScripts Home, can be found at http://localhost:8082/alfresco

Alfresco 6 uses Solr to index content, and the Solr console is available at http://localhost:8083/solr

To stop Alfresco, just press CTRL-C in the terminal where you have launched "docker-compose up". This will not reset your changes nor lose your documents. To start Alfresco again, just launch the same "docker-compose up" command in the acs-community-deployment/docker-compose folder.

Going further

As you might have guessed, Alfresco is split into several Docker containers.

To see them all, type the following:

docker container ls

This shows you all of your containers. Have a look at the last column:

[...] NAMES

[...] dockercompose_share_1

[...] dockercompose_solr6_1

[...] dockercompose_alfresco_1

[...] dockercompose_postgres_1

The containers are listed in reverse startup order:

- Alfresco Share (the web interface)

- Alfresco Search Services (the Solr engine and database)

- Alfresco Content Repository (the repository)

- Postgres (the main database)

To see the logs for all containers in real-time, type this:
docker-compose logs --follow share alfresco solr6 postgres

Let's say you want to modify a configuration file or check memory consumption on the Postgres container. Copy the name of Postgres in the "NAMES" column (for instance mine is dockercompose_postgres_1) and paste it inside this command:

docker exec -it dockercompose_postgres_1 bash

That's it, now you have a terminal inside your container!

If you like Alfresco and want to install it on a production server, Alfresco recommends Kubernetes instead of Docker, more on this later!