Installing ControlTier 3.2 on Windows XP

[Note: These instructions are for installing 3.2 and they point to an archived version of the 3.2 manual. If you are installing a newer version of ControlTier go to the ControlTier wiki]

Here's my cheat sheet for installing the ControlTier framework on Windows XP (soon to be folded into the standard documentation!):

• Use Firefox with the ControlTier web applications since AJAX compatibility issue preclude using IE
• Follow the 3.2 framework installation notes on Open.ControlTier
  
• Choose a %CTIER_ROOT% directory that doesn't contain spaces since this is know to break certain standard modules (e.g. "C:\ctier")
  
• So far as dependencies are concerned:

1. ControlTier requires Java 1.5. I keep a zipped up version of Sun's JDK that I can unpack into "%CTIER_ROOT%\pkgs" to avoid disturbing the system-wide installation. (There are some issues associated with attempting to install multiple versions of Java on the same system using Sun's Microsoft Installer).
   
2. You can find the Graphviz Windows installer on their download page (the latest version when I looked was 2.20.3. I also install Graphviz into "%CTIER_ROOT%\pkgs" since it usually only required by ControlTier. (Note that I've found myself having to manually sort out the Path system environment variable in order to ensure the correct "dot.exe" is in %PATH% once Graphviz has been installed a couple of times).
   

• Download the Zip release of the latest 3.2 release of the ControlTier framework from Sourceforge. This was version 3.2.4 at the time of writing this posting. (When installing from a local Windows desktop or from an RDP session I prefer to use the Jar installer, for all other circumstances I use the Zip installer).
• In preparing these notes I ran through the installation (taking default values) using the Zip installation method successfully, however ...
  
• ... with this release the Jar installer (which attempts to establish Jetty as a Windows service) is broken.

• In order to start the ControlTier server:

1. I started a new command shell and ran the "ctier.bat" script that the installer placed in my user's home directory ("C:\Documents and Settings\Anthony Shortland").
2. I executed "%JETTY_HOME%\bin\start.bat"
3. I picked up the ControlTier server's "Welcome" page at "http://localhost:8080" and from there launched Jobcenter, Workbench, ReportCenter and Jackrabbit ...
4. ... authenticating as "default/default" as required.

• In order to populate the default Workbench project with a useful set of modules, I downloaded the latest (3.2.4) release of the Elements Module Library seed Jar from the Sourceforge "Moduleforge" project ...
• ... and loaded it via Workbench's Admin page "import seed" dialog.

At this point I had a working ControlTier framework installation ready to push ahead and try both some of the tutorials on Open.Controltier.

Anthony Shortland.
anthony@controltier.com