LiveCycle Product Blog

There are a number of LiveCycle community sites and resources that are available to the public, but its come to my attention that some people don't know all of them, or what's available and when you'd use which one. Here's a list of what I consider to be the top resources for LiveCycle.

The following lists a number of resources available to LiveCycle developers.

LiveCycle Developer Center - The LiveCycle Developer Center is the best source for Adobe LiveCycle content. Its updated on a weekly basis, so you’ll want to check back every week for new content. New content is almost always posted on the front page before being moved to subsections, so once you’ve browsed the subsections, hitting the front page on a weekly basis should be all you need.

MXNA Aggregator - MXNA aggregates a number of blogs into a single source, and is a great way to see what the Adobe community is talking about. Search for “livecycle” to filter out unwanted content.

Adobe Forums – There are LiveCycle specific forums on this site. These forums are monitored by Adobe employees, including Product Management and Developer Support. There’s no guarantee you’ll get an answer to any question, you’ll need to register for the Adobe Enterprise Developer Program if you want that guarantee, but a lot of people watch these forums on a regular basis.

Adobe LiveCycle Blog – Fairly new, this blog will feature content from LiveCycle team members, with a variety of technical detail. (You're reading this right now).

Stefan Cameron’s Blog – Stefan Cameron is an engineer on the Adobe LiveCycle Designer team, and blogs regularly about the product.

Adobe LiveCycle Mailing List – This email based group allows developers to stay in touch with one another, and is monitored by many Adobe employees as well. The questions on this list are for more advanced users than in the LiveCycle Forums.

Adobe Enterprise Developer Program - $1495 subscription program provides unlimited email based support for one year, as well as access to the individual LiveCycle products, on all operating systems and application servers. If you are a member of the program, you can sign in at http://partners.adobe.com/asn/main.do to download the individual pieces of LiveCycle software.

Adobe LiveCycle Toolbox – The LiveCycle Toolbox is a pre-configured LiveCycle install, running on Windows / JBoss / MySQL. Removes the need to manually install the LiveCycle products, but is not available on other platforms or application servers. This download is now free.

Email – Email the Developer Relations team with questions about LiveCycle software, community resources or any other related questions.

Posted by at 03:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are several ways of configuring the JBoss application server to automatically startup on server reboot. JBoss itself recommends using third-party tools to set up a Windows service for this.

There is another, easier way - configure it as a scheduled task.

Once you have fully configured JBoss 3.2.5 for LiveCycle and have verified that it works:
- go to Start->All Programs->Control Panel->Scheduled Tasks->Add Scheduled Task
- click Next
- browse to %JBOSS_HOME%\bin\run.bat
- Give it a name like "JBoss"
- click the radiobutton for 'When my computer starts'
- provide a local userID and password JBoss can use to run
- check the checkbox for 'Open advanced properties for this task when I click Finish'
- in the 'Task' tab, add -c all to the 'Run' field so that it looks something like this : C:\jboss-3.2.5\bin\run.bat -c all This 'c' switch will tell JBoss to run using the 'all' configuration.
- in the 'Settings' tab, uncheck the checkbox for "Stop the task if it runs for 72 hours 0 minutes". We don't want it stopping for any reason.
- uncheck all checkboxes in the 'Power Management' section. You probably won't be running JBoss AS on a laptop running on batteries!

Posted by Jayan Kandathil at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In many customer situations, you might be required to run multiple JBoss instances on the same server. For example, LiveCycle Workflow on JBoss 3.2.5 and BAM (Business Activity Monitor) on JBoss 3.2.6

To avoid port conflicts, you will have to change the ports for one of the JBosss instances. Here is a list of what you'd have to do if you are using the "all" configuration:

Please note : some of these recommended ports might conflict in your particular environment. In such cases, you might have to experiment until you get one that does not conflict. The JBoss server.log will tell you if there are any port conflicts. In Windows, you can use TCPView from Microsoft to inventory currently used ports. On Linux, you can use the netstat -an command.

%JBOSS_HOME%\server\all\deploy\jbossweb-tomcat50.sar\server.xml
Change HTTP/1.1 Connector port from 8080 to 8888
Change AJP 1.3 Connector port from 8009 to 8099
Change SSL/TLS Connector port from 8443 to 8493

%JBOSS_HOME%\server\all\conf\jboss-service.xml
Change WebService port from 8083 to 8899
Change NamingService Port from 1099 to 9999
Change RMIport from 1098 to 9998
Change RMIObjectPort from 4444 to 9444
Change PooledInvoker ServerBindPort from 4445 to 9445

%JBOSS_HOME%\server\all\deploy\cluster-service.xml
Change ha.jndi.HANamingService port from 1100 to 1190 and correspondingly in...

%JBOSS_HOME%\server\all\deploy\jms\hajndi-jms-ds.xml
Change java.naming.provider.url from 1100 to 1190

%JBOSS_HOME%\server\all\conf\jacorb.properties
Change OAPort from 3528 to 9528
Change OASSLPort from 3529 to 9529

%JBOSS_HOME%\server\all\deploy-hasingleton\jms\oilservice.xml
Change ServerBindPort from 8090 to 8099

%JBOSS_HOME%\server\all\deploy-hasingleton\jms\oil2-service.xml
Change serverBindPoa from from 8092 to 8199

%JBOSS_HOME%\server\all\deploy-hasingleton\jms\uil2-service.xml
Change ServerBindPort from 8093 to 8993. For the "default" configuration (BAM), the uil2service.xml is in /default/deploy/jms/

%JBOSS_HOME%\server\all\deploy\snmp-adaptor.sar\META-INF\jboss-service.xml
Change from port 1162 to 1182 and correspondingly in...

%JBOSS_HOME%\server\all\deploy\snmp-adaptor.sar\managers.xml
Change from port 1162 to 1182

For JBoss 4.0.3, this article might help.

Posted by Jayan Kandathil at 05:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

1) Create a keystore as well as a certificate-key pair using the following command:
$JAVA_HOME\jre\bin\keytool -genkey -keystore [keystore_filename]
-storepass [keystore_password] -keypass [keystore_password] -keyalg RSA
-validity 365 -alias [alias_name] -dname
"cn=[fully_qualified_DNS_name_of_server], OU=[department_name],
O=[company_name], ST=[complete_state_or_province_name], C=[two-letter_country_code]"

note: the quotes are required. -storepass and -keypass should be the same. Make sure you get the fully_qualified_DNS_name_of_server exactly right, if not you'll regret it later. The country_name should be the two-letter code for the country. You can get the IANA-provided two-letter TLD codes for all countries here: http://www.iana.org/root-whois/index.html. IANA is the Internet Assigned Names Authority. TLD = Top Level Domain.

2) Create a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) for the certificate in the certificate-key pair you just created with the following command:
$JAVA_HOME\jre\bin\keytool -certreq -keystore
[full_path_to_the_keystore_filename] -alias [alias_name] -storepass
[keystore_password] -keypass [keystore_password] -keyalg RSA -file
[filename_for_the_CSR]

3) Get the customer's IT person in charge of the customer's SSL certificates to login to their Certificate Authority's website to request the Certificate Authority to sign the new certificate with their own certificate. Copy-paste the contents of the [filename_for_the_CSR]. It'll look like gobbledygook. The Certificate Authority can be VeriSign, Entrust, Thawte or any other.

4) Get the customer's IT person in charge of the customer's SSL certificates to forward to you the response from the Certificate Authority. If it is in the body of an e-mail, copy-paste the contents (including the BEGIN CERTIFICATE and END CERTIFICATE lines) into a text file, save as "All Files" with any filename like CA_signed_cert.cer

5) Import the CA-signed certificate back into your keystore with the following command:
$JAVA_HOME\jre\bin\keytool -import -trustcacerts -keystore
[keystore_filename] -storepass [keystore_password] -alias [alias_name]
-keypass [keystore_password] -file [filename_for_the_CA_signed_cert]

If you fail to add the -trustcacerts parameter, you will get a "failed to establish chain from reply" error. This is because the file cacerts in $JAVA_HOME\jre\lib\security\ contains the public certificates of all the popular CAs like VeriSign, Entrust and Thawte. To determine the contents of the cacerts file (to verify if your CA is listed there), use the following command:
$JAVA_HOME\jre\bin\keytool -list -keystore $JAVA_HOME\\jre\lib\security\cacerts -storepass changeit

6) Copy the keystore file to $JBOSS_HOME\conf\

7) Edit server.xml in $JBOSS_HOME\server\all\deploy\jbossweb-tomcat50.sar\ to point the SSL/TLS Connector to the new keystore file like this:
keystoreFile="${jboss.server.home.dir}/conf/" keystorePass=""

8) re-start JBoss.

9) Access it with the URL https://[fully_qualified_DNS_name_of_server]:8443. It should work and there should be no warning dialogs.

Posted by Jayan Kandathil at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you are heading out for an installation of LiveCycle, you will find the following tools useful. All, except AquaDataStudio, are Windows-only.

- LDAP Browser from Softerra : http://www.softerra.com/download.htm : can handle almost all of the LDAP directrories out there in addition to Active Directory

- AquaDataStudio from AquaFold : http://www.aquafold.com : can handle all of the databases supported by LiveCycle

- BareTail from Bare Metal Software : http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail : highly customizable log reader that can be customized to read server logs for WebSphere, WebLogic and JBoss

- CPU-Z from CPU-ID : http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php : provides very detailed information regarding your server hardware including processor, memory and the motherboard

- TCPView from SysInternals (now owned by Microsoft) : http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/TcpView.html : provides details of all ports used by all running applications, BIG help in resolving port conflicts

- Process Explorer also from from SysInternals : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx : a much more functional tool than Windows Task Manager

- Ethereal Packet Analyzer from Ethereal : http://www.ethereal.com/download.html : helps troubleshoot authentication issues, especially for LiveCycle Policy Server

Posted by Jayan Kandathil at 04:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)