Administering Admin Dashboard

Installing the Dashboard

The Administration Dashboard requires Java 8. It uses the default Sophora directory structure (see Configuring the Sophora Server).

To install the Dashboard,

1. unpack the archive to a folder named "apps",
2. create a symlink named "sophora-dashboard2" to the extracted folder inside the "apps" folder,
3. create a folder for the instance date like "dashboard2",
4. create a symlink to ../apps/sophora-dashboard2/dashboard.sh in that folder,
5. create a symlink to ../apps/sophora-dashboard2/yo in that folder,
6. create the file config/dashboard-config.json as described below.

The folder structure should look like depicted (question marks are symlinks). In case the logs and persistence folders don't exist, they will be created automatically once the Dashboard is started.

Configuration

The Dashboard is designed to do most of its configuration automatically. However, some initial settings have to be provided and some optional ones can be added. All the configuration is done in the config/dashboard-config.json file. Below you can see an example configuration:

{
	httpPort: 8090,
	login: "dashboard",
	password: "dashboardSecret",
	vmargs: "-Xmx512m",
	hostname: "test.subshell.com",
	defaultPollInterval: 10000,
	statusPollInterval: 1000,
	documentCountInterval: 3600000,
	server: {
		sophoraUsername: "admin",
		sophoraPassword: "secret",
		masterHostname: "trunk.subshell.com",
		masterHttpPort: 1196,
		contentApiPath: "/content-api",
		jolokiaUsername: "jolokia",
		jolokiaPassword: "secret",
		jolokiaPath: "/jolokia",
		hasEmbeddedSolr: true,
		solrUsername: "solr",
		solrPassword: "solr",
		solrPath: "/solr",
		tomcatJmx: {
			port: 9004,
			username: "",
			password: ""
		}
	},
	importer: {
		jolokiaUsername: "importerjmx",
		jolokiaPassword: "secret",
		jolokiaPath: "/jolokia"
	},
 	indexer: {
		jolokiaUsername: "admin",
		jolokiaPassword: "secret",
		jolokiaPath: "/jolokia"
	},
	mail: {
		recipients: [
			"recipient1@subshell.com",
			"recipient2@subshell.com"
		],
		smtpHost: "localhost",
		smtpPort: 25,
		username: "user",
		password: "secret",
		fromAddress: "sophora-dashboard@yourdomain.com",
		notificationDelay: 30
	},
	links: [ 		
		{ 	url: "http://www.subshell.com/de/index.html", 		 
			description: "Subshell" 
		}, 		
		{ 	url: "https://github.com/airbnb/javascript", 		 
			description: "JavaScript Style Guide" 		
		}
	]
}

The following list explains the configuration options:

Ports

The following ports are in use for the communication between the Dashboard and Sophora’s components:

Dashboard – Sophora Primary (Master), Staging Server

• HTTP-port of the server. Also, the communication of the DeskClient, the Content API and Solr run on this port.
• Set masterHttpUseSsl to true if the server uses HTTPS.

Dashboard – Importer

• Jolokia-port. Configurable via the option sophora.importer.jolokia.port in sophora-importer.properties. 1496 is set as the default.

Dashboard – Tomcats

• JMX-port of the Tomcat. 9004 is set as the default in the DeskClient.

JMX in Tomcat

The Dashboard uses the JMX-URLs as follows:

service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://<HOSTNAME>:<PORT>/jmxrmi

The port and the authentication can be configured via dashboard-config.json.

In order to allow access through firewall and VPN tunnels you can configure the JmxRemoteLifecycleListener. For more information see JMX Remote Lifecycle Listener.

Web Application Configuration

Webapps/deliveries only appear in the Dashboard, if sophora.delivery.externalUrl is configured (since Delivery 2.1.16, 2.2.6 and 2.3.0).
The configured URL need to point at the Tomcat context of the webapp and need to be accessible by the Dashboard.

More about configuration parameters.

Starting and Stopping the Dashboard Application

To start the Dashboard, use the start and stop script dashboard.sh that comes with the installation. In a console in the directory of the script, type ./dashboard.sh start or ./dashboard.sh stop.

Using HTTP Proxies

If the Dashboard is required to use a HTTP proxy to connect to Sophora servers, the JVM system properties http.proxyHost and http.proxyPort may be used. You can use the vmargs configuration property of the Dashboard in config/dashboard-config.json, for example:

{
  ...
  vmargs: "-Dhttp.proxyHost=10.0.0.1 -Dhttp.proxyPort=8080",
  ...
}

Troubleshooting

The Dashboard persists tools and servers it was once connected to in the /persistence folder. It can help to stop the Dashboard remove the contents of this folder and start the Dashboard again. Only remove the contents of this folder if the Dashboard is not running.