This page explains how to configure and share the folder easa-share in a multi-server environment.

There are two ways to configure the remote share on windows.

This option includes creating a user account for the EASA service to use and identical user accounts on all the other machines as well.

The following steps detail how to configure remote access:

• Create the following new windows user with same password in both machines (the EASA Server machine and the JSF/Excel Server machine):

User = EASA
Password = <password>

The user accounts must have administrator rights. Please choose the password in a way that it can be entered on all machines later (e.g. only include special characters present on all the machines / keyboards).

• NFTS access has to be granted for the new EASA user to every EASA folder on the machines involved. These folders are the EASA Server folder and the EasaServerData folder, both found under the path specified at installation. Remember that this task has to be done on the EASA server machine and on all JSF/Excel Server machines. Follow these steps for each folder to grant access:
  
  
  • Right click on the folder and open Properties
  • Go to Security Tab
  • Click Edit
  • Click Add
  • Write easa in the textbox
  • Click Check Names (The user will be found and turn underlined)
  • Click OK button
  • Allow Full control for EASA user
  • Click Apply then OK
  • Click OK

• A remote JSF Server and remote Excel Server each need to have their EASA services configured to use the account set up on these machines for this purpose. The following steps detail how to apply the settings:
  
  
  • Open services
  • Right click on the service (EASA Tomcat6 is suggested by the installer by default) and open Properties
  • Select the Log On tab
  • Check the option This account and click Browse
  • Type easa in the textbox and click Check Names
  • Click OK
  • Type the <password> (specified above) on both Password and Confirm Password fields
  • Click Apply, then OK
  • Restart the service

• Finally, the easa-share folder must be shared between these computers:
  • Navigate to the EasaServerData folder on the EASA Server machine.
  • Right click on easa-share folder and select Properties
  • Select the Sharing tab and click on Advanced Sharing
  • Enable Share this folder
  • Click Permissions
  • Click Add to open the add user dialog box

Now the shared folder is ready to use by a Windows installation of remote JSF Server, Excel Server or EASA Web Service.

We will grant access specifically to the LocalSystem and NetworkService accounts in the remote machine which runs JSF, Excel or EASA Web Service.

Since 5.4 there is a new way to configure a remote server (Usually JSF/Excel pair) to be able to access a database directly without need to go through EASA Server as it was before. For that, we created a new folder called easa-share which will contain drivers and xmls to access databases and email configuration too. Configure a network path to make the remote server able to access that folder over the network. That can be done following the EASA-Share Folder Configuration for Cluster Server Installations guide in wiki:

If that network folder is not configured, then we have a fallback to make it work out of the box; EASA Server will send the needed files to the remote server. When you run EASA in application mode you will see a test on this network path, if it's well configured then it will show

• test network path: works: true.

If it's not configured or it has any issue accessing the folder then it will show:

• test network path: works: false

Follow these steps to configure remote access:

• Navigate to the EasaServerData folder on the EASA Server machine.
• Right click on easa-share folder and select Properties
• Select the Sharing tab and click on Advanced Sharing
• Enable Share this folder
• Click Permissions
• Click Add to open the add user dialog box
• Click on Object Types… button, select Computers and click OK
• Write the name of the remote machine in the textbox and click Check Names, the machine name will turn underlined. Click O
• The machine will be added to the list, check Change and “Read” in the Allow column and click OK
• Repeat the above steps for all machines on the network that need access
• Click Apply and OK to close Advanced Sharing
• Select the Security tab and click Edit
• The Permissions dialog box will open. Click Add
• Click Object Types… and select Computers then click OK
• Write the name of the remote machine in the textbox and click Check Names, the machine name will turn underlined. Click OK
• The name of the machine will be added to the list, check Modify in the Allow column
• Repeat the process to add the name of the machine as many times as remote machines are in the network until you added all of them
• Click Apply then OK to close the dialog
• Click on Close to close Properties dialog

Now the shared folder is ready to use by a Windows installation of remote JSF, Excel or EASA Web Service.

There are multiple ways to configure the remote share on UNIX systems. In this article we will use a free software package called Samba to share the folder with both Windows and UNIX. This allows mixing of Windows and UNIX servers in a multi-server environment.

The following configuration should be made only if the main EASA Server machine is running on a UNIX based OS. If the shared folder has to be used by a UNIX machine then follow Mount easa-share in UNIX.

• Install EASA Server and make sure /root/EasaServerData/easa-share folder exists (by default it installs under the /root folder)
  
  
• Install Samba, if it's not already installed, with the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install samba

• Configure samba configuration file with the following command (make a backup first in the /home folder):

sudo cp /etc/samba/smb.conf ~
sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf

• Once the file is opened, add the following at the end of the file (sensitive to whitespaces around equality signs):

[easa-share] 
path = /root/EasaServerData/easa-share 
browseable = yes 
writable = yes 
read only = no 
public = yes 
guest ok = yes
create mask = 0755 
directory mask = 0755 
force user = root

• Save the file and close
• Restart the samba service with the following command:

      sudo service smbd restart

Now the shared folder is ready to use by a Windows installation of remote JSF, Excel or EASA Web Service.

This configuration will be needed only if you need to access a remote share from a UNIX machine. The following steps explain how to mount the easa-share at bootup time and use the mount folder as shared folder.

Skip the step about network path to easa-share when using the installer to install a remote JSF or EASA-WS, because for this case it wil be set manually.

• Install cifs-utils with the following command:

       sudo apt-get install cifs-utils

• Create a folder for easa-share (I will create it under /mnt but any path can be used):

         sudo mkdir /mnt/easa-share

• Modify the /etc/fstab file to set the mount at bootup

• Open the file in a text editor

    sudo gedit /etc/fstab

• Add the following line at the end of the file:

//<Hostname OR IP>/easa-share /mnt/easa-share cifs guest,_netdev,uid=<USER> 0 0

• Save and close the fstab file
• Force the mount of the easa-share with the following command (this is more like a Troubleshooting step, as it will be mounted automatically at bootup time):

       sudo mount -a

We need to set manually the recently mounted easa-share as shared folder for the EASA installation. For that, we have to go to the EASAServerData folder, with root privileges if it is installed as default. To do it execute the following commands:

su
cd /
cd root/EasaServerData

• Edit the shared.properties file (use sudo if the root privileges were dropped in the meantime):

     gedit shared.properties

• Modify the line to be as follows:

     shared.path=/mnt/easa-share

In case that IP is used to point to the EASA server machine in shared.properties, make sure that the remote machine can ping the EASA server using that same IP address.