The configure
script allows you to manage and deploy custom configurations to Appian installations in a repeatable manner. It also aids with the initial setup of the configurations required for running Appian.
Results of the script are logged to configure.log in the same directory in which the script resides.
Use of a version control system in conjunction with the script is highly recommended. The script creates a repository directory in which all configuration files are stored before being deployed. This directory should be version controlled using your preferred version control mechanism, such as Git.
Caution: Appian does not support any custom configurations of the Tomcat instance included with Appian. If you do modify the Tomcat instance of a self-managed installation, we cannot guarantee that hotfixes or upgrades will not impact or overwrite the modifications. For example, we do not support enabling HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) in the Tomcat instance included with Appian. Instead, we recommend adding HSTS headers at the web server layer or via an upstream network device.
The typical life cycle of using the configure
script to aid configuration management with Appian is as follows:
configure
script.configure
script.configure
script.configure
script to deploy the configurations to Appian.Note: The configure script does not change configurations. It deploys the configurations that are stored in its repository. You must change configuration files like custom.properties, password.properties, and appian-topology.xml. Change these files in the configure script repository, version control the changes, and then use the configure script to deploy the changes.
To run the script:
<APPIAN_HOME>/_admin/_scripts/configure
configure.sh
(or configure.bat
on Windows)The script provides a menu driven interface for executing the various configuration and deployment tasks. The script can also be run in a non-interactive manner by passing parameters on the command line when executing the script—see the Silent Mode section for details.
The first step when running the configure
script on a new machine is creating a repository. The configuration repository is where your custom configurations will be stored.
configure.sh
(or configure.bat
on Windows).After you create a repository, the repository location is displayed in the menu's banner and additional menu options become available. Also, the menu option to create a repository becomes an option to change the repository location, which creates a new repository at the given new location.
Backing up the Appian directories is recommended before deploying any custom configurations.
Run this script option after installing Appian but before deploying any custom configurations in order to create a backup copy which can be restored. To undo all custom configurations, restore from this backup by deleting the directories from Appian and copying these backup directories to the <APPIAN_HOME>
directory.
configure.sh
(or configure.bat
on Windows).2 - Create initial backup of Appian installation
.The configure
script does not back up Appian data. Use the scripts described in the Data Maintenance page to manage data backups.
See also: Data Maintenance
This option is only available once you have created a repository.
An environment is an Appian instance that has different configurations than other instances. For instance, you may have one set of configurations for your development environment and a different set of configurations for your production environment.
Creating a new environment creates an initial copy of configuration files from templates that are specific to that environment. When deploying configurations, the environments you create will be available as selectable options and the corresponding files will be copied to the target instance of Appian.
configure.sh
(or configure.bat
on Windows)3 - Register an environment
The following names are reserved and cannot be used as an environment name:
This option identifies the file and configuration changes in your installation so you can validate the changes to your environment, and easily troubleshoot any potential issues.
This option is only available after installation, and should be run before you select a repository.
To validate your installation:
configure.sh
(or configure.bat
on Windows).From the main menu, select 3 - Validate installation
.
Note: If you already selected a repository, select 6 - Tools
and then choose 3 - Validate installation
.
Once the validatation is complete, the following results will be populated:
config-result.csv
under _scripts/configure/installation-validation/
.MODIFIED
, MISSING
, or UNEXPECTED
. This output is also created as result.csv
under _scripts/configure/installation-validation/
.The configure
script does not modify values in the configuration files in the repository.
After registering an environment, set the desired configuration values for that environment by editing the configuration files suffixed with the environment name. Additionally, you can provide new files in the configuration repository that will be copied to the target when deploying. For instance,
k3.lic.env
file placed in <REPO>/server/_bin/k/linux64/
and a k4.lic.env
file placed in <REPO>/data-server/engine/bin/q/l64/
will be copied to the corresponding directories in <APPIAN_HOME>
when the env
environment is deployed.For more details on setting configuration values see:
This option is only available once you have created a repository.
The configure
script can conduct a minimal review of the configuration files to verify that custom.properties
is present and that the essential properties are defined there.
configure.sh
(or configure.bat
on Windows).4 - Validate configurations
.The validation will inspect all registered environments and either report success or any validation errors back to the console
Validation of a specific environment is also performed automatically when you deploy configurations for the selected environment.
This option is only available once you have registered an environment.
The configuration script deploys configurations by copying the configuration files from the repository directory to the target Appian directory.
Before executing this option you must edit the appropriate configuration files for the environment that you wish to deploy.
configure.sh
(or configure.bat
on Windows).5 - Deploy configurations
.If you have not run a backup before deploying configurations, the script will prompt you to run an optional backup before deploying configurations.
The tools menu contains utilities to aid in the configuration and deployment of Appian.
configure.sh
(or configure.bat
on Windows)6 - Tools
1 - Encode passwords for use in data source configuration
configure.sh
(or configure.bat
on Windows)6 - Tools
2 - Configure Tomcat clustering by specifying a node name
node1
or node2
.The above activities are available as command line options allowing you to build scripts that bypass the menu-driven interactive interface. The silent mode is accessed by passing -silent
as a parameter to the script. The task name for the desired activity must be passed as task=value
, plus any parameters necessary for that task. Additional parameters and their corresponding values are passed in the parameter=value
format. For example, to run the deployAppianConfigurations
task:
1
configure.sh -silent task=deployAppianConfigurations environmentName=dev
Activity | Task Name | Parameters | Prerequisites |
---|---|---|---|
Create Repository | createRepository |
|
None |
Back up Appian | backupAppian |
|
None |
Register Environment | registerEnvironment |
|
A repository must have been created, either through silent mode or using the menu-driven interface. |
Validate Configurations | validateConfigurations |
None |
|
Deploy Configurations to Appian | deployAppianConfigurations |
|
|
Encode Data Source Password | encodeDataSourcePassword |
|
None |
Configure Script