How to Install dotCMS on Ubuntu 16.04

DotCMS is an open-source, enterprise-grade content management system written in Java. It contains nearly every feature that is required to create a website for your business. It also provides a RESTful API to integrate with other services such as CRM, mobile applications, and more. Futhermore, DotCMS uses Elasticsearch for real-time indexing of content and Redis for implementing a multi-tier cache.

Prerequisites

• A DreamVPS Ubuntu 16.04 server instance.
• A sudo user.
• A domain name pointed towards the server.

For this tutorial, we will use ‘192.168.0.1’ as the public IP address and ‘cms.example.com’ as the domain name pointed towards the ‘Vultr’ instance. Please make sure to replace all occurrences of the example domain name and public IP address with your actual one.

Install Java

Add the ‘Ubuntu’ repository for Oracle Java 8.

sudo add-apt-repository --yes ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt update

Install Java.

sudo apt -y install oracle-java8-installer

You will be able to verify Java’s version.

java -version

You will see the following output.

user@dreamvps:~$ java -version
java version "1.8.0_161"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_161-b12)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.161-b12, mixed mode)

Set the default path for Java by installing the following package.

sudo apt -y install oracle-java8-set-default

You can verify that ‘JAVA_HOME’ is set.

echo $JAVA_HOME

You will receive the following output.

user@dreamvps:~$ echo $JAVA_HOME
/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle

If you see no output at all, you will need to log out from the current shell and log back in.

Install PostgreSQL

By default, dotCMS is configured to use the ‘H2 database’ engine. The H2 database engine is a flat file based database engine. It is not recommended to use in production. In this tutorial, we will be using the PostgreSQL server to store the dotCMS database.
PostgreSQL is an object-relational database system, known for its stability and speed. The default Ubuntu repository contains an old version of PostgreSQL, so add the ‘PostgreSQL’ repository.

echo "deb http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ xenial-pgdg main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list
wget --quiet -O - https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt update

Install the PostgreSQL database server.

sudo apt -y install postgresql

Start the PostgreSQL server and enable it to start automatically at boot time.

sudo systemctl start postgresql
sudo systemctl enable postgresql

Change the password for the default PostgreSQL user.

sudo passwd postgres

Log in as the PostgreSQL user.

sudo su - postgres

Create a new PostgreSQL user for dotCMS.

createuser dotcms

PostgreSQL provides the ‘psql’ shell to run queries on the database server. Switch to the PostgreSQL shell.

psql

Set a password for the newly created user for the dotCMS database.

ALTER USER dotcms WITH ENCRYPTED password 'DBPassword';

Replace the database user password ‘DBPassword’ with a secure password of your choosing.
Create a new database for the dotCMS installation.
CREATE DATABASE dotcms OWNER dotcms;
Exit from the psql shell.
\q
Switch to the sudo user.

exit

Install dotCMS
Download the dotCMS archive.

wget https://dotcms.com/physical_downloads/release_builds/dotcms_4.3.2.tar.gz

You can always find the link to the latest version of the application on the dotCMS download page.
Create a new directory to store the dotCMS files and extract them into it.

sudo mkdir /opt/dotcms
sudo tar -zxf dotcms*.tar.gz -C /opt/dotcms

Open the database configuration file.

cd /opt/dotcms
sudo nano dotserver/tomcat-*/webapps/ROOT/META-INF/context.xml

Find the H2 block.

<!-- H2 -->
<Resource name="jdbc/dotCMSPool" auth="Container"
 ...
 validationQuery="SELECT 1" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" />

Comment out the whole H2 section by moving the comment delimiter ‘–>’ from the start of the section to the end of the section. It should look like the following.

<!-- H2
<Resource name="jdbc/dotCMSPool" auth="Container"
 ...
 validationQuery="SELECT 1" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" />
-->

Uncomment the PostgreSQL section by removing the comment delimiter ‘—>’ from the end of section and placing it on the top wrapping ‘POSTGRESQL’.
Then, find ‘username=‘ and ‘password=‘ and replace the existing values with the username and password of your PostgreSQL database user. If you have used a database name other than ‘dotcms’, you will need to change the database name in ‘url=‘.
Once configured, the PostgreSQL block in the file should look like the following.

<!-- POSTGRESQL -->
<Resource name="jdbc/dotCMSPool" auth="Container"
      type="javax.sql.DataSource"
      factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory"
      driverClassName="org.postgresql.Driver"
      url="jdbc:postgresql://localhost/dotcms"
      username="dotcms" password="DBPassword" maxTotal="60" maxIdle="10" maxWaitMillis="60000"
      removeAbandonedOnBorrow="true" removeAbandonedOnMaintenance="true" removeAbandonedTimeout="60" logAbandoned="true"
      timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="30000" validationQuery="SELECT 1" testOnBorrow="true" testWhileIdle="true" />

Provide the execution permission for all the executable files.

sudo chmod 755 ./bin/*.sh
sudo chmod 755 dotserver/tomcat-*/bin/*.sh

DotCMS is now installed on your server. To immediately run the application, execute the following.

cd /opt/dotcms
sudo bin/startup.sh

You will see the following output when the server has started successfully.

/opt/dotcms$ sudo bin/startup.sh
Using DOTCMS_HOME = /opt/dotcms/dotserver/tomcat-8.0.18/webapps/ROOT
Using DOTSERVER = dotcms
Using CATALINA_PID = /tmp/dotcms.pid
Using JAVA_OPTS =  -Djava.awt.headless=true -Xverify:none -Dfile.encoding=UTF8 -server -XX:+DisableExplicitGC -XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=512m -Xmx1G -XX:+UseG1GC -javaagent:/opt/dotcms/dotserver/tomcat-8.0.18/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/lib/byte-buddy-agent-1.6.12.jar -Ddotserver=dotcms
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /opt/dotcms/dotserver/tomcat-8.0.18
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /opt/dotcms/dotserver/tomcat-8.0.18
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /opt/dotcms/dotserver/tomcat-8.0.18/temp
Using JRE_HOME:        /usr
Using CLASSPATH:       /opt/dotcms/dotserver/tomcat-8.0.18/bin/bootstrap.jar:/opt/dotcms/dotserver/tomcat-8.0.18/bin/tomcat-juli.jar
Using CATALINA_PID:    /tmp/dotcms.pid
Tomcat started.

The above command will start the ‘Tomcat’ web server to serve the application on port 8080.
Open your favorite browser and browse to ‘http://192.168.0.1:8080′. You will see that the application is running a demo website.
If you do not see your website, please wait; this is due to the first startup of the dotCMS server taking five to ten minutes as it writes data into the PostgreSQL database and builds the cache. You can also check the startup logs.

tail -n 1000 -f /opt/dotcms/dotserver/tomcat-*/webapps/ROOT/dotsecure/logs/dotcms.log

Configure Systemd
The dotCMS server can be started directly using the startup script provided in the installer package. As a matter of convenience, you should set up a ‘Systemd’ unit file for the dotCMS server. This will ensure that the application server is automatically started on system restarts and failures.
Stop the running dotCMS server using the shutdown script.

sudo bin/shutdown.sh

Create an unprivileged user for running the dotCMS server; this is for security reasons.

sudo adduser --home /opt/dotcms -gecos "dotCMS User" --disabled-password --disabled-login dotcms

Provide ownership of the files to the dotCMS user.

sudo chown -R dotcms:dotcms /opt/dotcms

Create a new Systemd service.

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/dotcms.service

Populate the file.

[Unit]
Description=dotCMS service
After=syslog.target network.target
[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/opt/dotcms/bin/startup.sh
ExecStop=/opt/dotcms/bin/shutdown.sh
User=dotcms
Group=dotcms
Restart=always
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Start the application and enable it to automatically start at boot time.

sudo systemctl start dotcms
sudo systemctl enable dotcms

Ensure that the service is running.

sudo systemctl status dotcms

Configure the Reverse Proxy
By default, the dotCMS server listens on port 8080. Configure Nginx as the reverse proxy so that the application can be accessed via the standard HTTP and HTTPS ports. Also, configure Nginx to use the SSL generated with Let’s Encrypt.
Install Nginx.

sudo apt -y install nginx

Start Nginx and enable it to automatically start at boot time.

sudo systemctl start nginx
sudo systemctl enable nginx

Add the ‘Certbot’ repository.

sudo add-apt-repository --yes ppa:certbot/certbot
sudo apt-get update

Install Certbot, this is the client application for Let’s Encrypt CA.

sudo apt -y install certbot

Note: To obtain certificates from Let’s Encrypt CA, the domain for which the certificates are to be generated must be pointed towards the server. If not, make the necessary changes to the DNS records of the domain and wait for the DNS to propagate before making the certificate request again. Certbot checks the domain authority before providing the certificates.
Generate the SSL certificates.

sudo certbot certonly --webroot -w /var/www/html -d cms.example.com

The generated certificates are likely to be stored in ‘/etc/letsencrypt/live/cms.example.com/’. Let’s Encrypt certificates expire in 90 days, hence it is recommended to set up auto-renewal of the certificates using Cron jobs.
Open the cron job file.

sudo crontab -e

Add the following line at the end of the file.

30 5 * * * /usr/bin/certbot renew --quiet

The above cron job will run every day at 5:30 AM. If the certificate is due for expiration, it will automatically be renewed.
Create a new server block file for the dotCMS site.

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/dotcms

Populate the file.

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name cms.example.com;
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}
server {
    listen 443;
    server_name cms.example.com;
    ssl_certificate           /etc/letsencrypt/live/cms.example.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key       /etc/letsencrypt/live/cms.example.com/privkey.pem;
    ssl on;
    ssl_session_cache  builtin:1000  shared:SSL:10m;
    ssl_protocols  TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
    ssl_ciphers HIGH:!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXPORT:!CAMELLIA:!DES:!MD5:!PSK:!RC4;
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
    access_log            /var/log/nginx/dotcms.access.log;
    location / {
      proxy_set_header        Host $host;
      proxy_set_header        X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
      proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
      proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
      proxy_pass          http://localhost:8080;
      proxy_read_timeout  90;
      proxy_redirect      http://localhost:8080 https://cms.example.com;
    }
  }

Activate the configuration.

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/dotcms /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/dotcms

Restart the Nginx web server so that the changes can take effect.

sudo systemctl restart nginx

The dotCMS application is now installed on your server for production use. Access the administrative dashboard on the following address.
https://cms.example.com/dotAdmin

Log in using the initial administrator account, ‘[email protected]‘ and the password admin. Change the default password immediately after login.
Congratulations, the dotCMS content management system is now installed on your server. You can modify the demo site or you can start building your site from scratch.