Installing Oracle/Stellent Content Server on MS Vista

Last February, shortly after it’s release, I upgraded my laptop to MS Vista.  Overall I would say my feelings on Vista are mixed, it has a very cool look and feel, but also can be a real pain due to a number of issues already covered in countless Linux blogs and Apple commercials.  At the time though the big issue I immediately ran in to was that Oracle/Stellent Content Server would not install.  I tried 10gr3 and 7.5.2 and both either timed out or arubtly threw and error stating that the OS was not compatible.

The one interesting thing was that I already had an instance on my laptop, which was installed prior to upgrading from XP and that instance was running great.  I thus concluded that the compatibility issues were related to the installer, not the actual system, and began experimenting with ways to work around the installer.

Before we go any farther it’s important to understand that Oracle and/or Stellent Content Server are not supported on MS Vista and from what I’ve heard they have no plans to start supporting it.  I personally have yet to experience any major compatibility issues with Content Server running on Vista, but I’m also not taxing my system heavily, more just proofing out different concepts as well as some limited development.

One of the required elements of my installation procedures is the use of a “preinstalled Windows XP environment” created on either a CD or a thumbdrive.  There are a number of utilities available to create a preinstalled environment, the one I used BartPE is free, Microsoft also has one which I have not tried but is available as well.  These utilities will allow you to create a bootable XP instance on a CD or thumbdrive, from there we’ll be able to boot and then install under XP on to our Vista drive.

Sounds like a hack so far?  Well it is, but keep in mind it’s only a hack around the installer.  Once the app is installed it’s business as ususal. 

When your preinstalled windows environment is ready to go, you can begin the installation process:

1.  Download and install Apache.  Windows Vista ships with IIS7, a brand new version and one heavily geared towards .NET web applications.  I’ve experimented some with the Oracle/Stellent ISAPI filter and IIS7 and had mixed results.  Apache on the other hand runs great on Vista and behaves in a a reliable predicatble manner.

2. Unzip the Oracle and/or Stellent ISO to an accessible folder on the hard drive.  Stellent 7.5.2 had some issues installing from a folder with a space in the name, so as a general practice I ususally unzip everything to a c:\stellent_install folder.

3. Load your preinstalled environment CD or thumbdrive and restart the machine, booting to your CD or thumbdrive.

4. Open a command window, navigate over to your c:\stellent_install folder and run the installer(for 7.5.1 ensure this is the command line installer)

5. During the install, follow the Stellent documentation to select the settings that best fit your needs.  There are a couple exceptions though:

• Choose to manually configure the web server 
• Skip the database configuration
• Do not install the Content Server or Admin Server as services

6. Remove your CD or thumbdrive and restart the machine

7. Configure your apache httpd.conf file to point to your new Oracle/Stellent instance.  Should looks something like this:


LoadModule IdcApacheAuth c:/stellent/shared/os/win32/lib/IdcApache22Auth.dll
IdcUserDB idcm1 "c:/stellent/data/users/userdb.txt"
Alias /stellent "c:/stellent/weblayout"
<Location "/stellent">
 DirectoryIndex portal.htm
 IdcSecurity <instance name>
 allow from all
</Location>

add the following if you’re going to install site studio
<Location "/">
 IdcSecurity idcm1
</Location>
UseCanonicalName Off

8.  Follow Oracle’s instructions for setting up your database.  If you’re using an Oracle database the installation doc’s steps should work great.  If you are using SQL Server 2005(and probably 2000), then you may want to consider using an alternative driver as I’ve had some issue with the JTDS driver which ships with Oracle/Stellent.  As an alternative you could download (what I think is) the newer JTDS 1.2 driver here.

To set up the driver: 

• Find the jtds-1.2.jar file in the downloaded zip and drop it in your shared/classes folder. 
• Open the System Properties applet and set the following:
  • JDBC Driver Name: net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver
  • JDBC Connection String: jdbc:jtds:sqlserver:/[server]:[port]/[database];instance=[sql server instance]
  • User name and Password
• On the Paths tab, add $COMPUTEDCLASSPATH;$SHAREDDIR/classes/jtds-1.2.jar to the Java Classpath

9.  Open a command window and navigate to the stellent/bin folder.  Run the following

IdcServerNT -install

This will install the content server service

10.  Navigate to the admin/bin folder and run the following:

IdcAdminNT -install

This will install the admin service

11.  Open your service and start the Idc Content Server and Idc Content Admin Server services.

That’s it.  You should now be able to open a browser and log in.