ArkCase aims to be the leading open source case management and IT modernization platform. After supporting numerous case management and IT modernization initiatives, the team at Armedia developed a framework to accelerate these initiatives and to reduce the cost of implementation. That framework matured and is the basis for ArkCase. We have and will continue to invest in making ArkCase a premier platform for IT modernization. As a thank you to our customers who embarked on this journey with us and a thank you to all the software engineers that have contributed open source technologies to advance this industry, ArkCase is now open source!
To evaluate ArkCase, or try it out, or just see how it works; in short, to run ArkCase in a VM without having to install all the developer tools, just follow the directions here: https://github.com/ArkCase/arkcase-ce#how-to-run-arkcase
And you can skip the Developer Setup section below.
This section documents how developers can build and run ArkCase. (For non-developers, and anyone who just wants to run ArkCase, please read the above section; you don't need to follow the rest of this wiki).
- at least 16 GB RAM
- at least 50 GB disk space (the Vagrant VM is 11G)
- Java 8 (AdoptOpenJDK JVM works well). Note, ArkCase is not tested on Java 9, Java 10, or Java 11.
- Maven 3.5+ https://maven.apache.org
- VirtualBox https://www.virtualbox.org
- Vagrant https://www.vagrantup.com
- Tomcat 9 https://tomcat.apache.org
- git https://git-scm.com/
- nodejs https://nodejs.org
- MacOS: install Node 6. Node 8 and Node 11 do not work on MacOS.
- Windows and Linux: use Node 8 or above.
- npm (comes with NodeJS)
- yarn https://yarnpkg.com
In this section you will start the Vagrant VM which runs the services ArkCase requires. These services include Solr, ActiveMQ, MySQL, Alfresco, and Pentaho.
First, install all the prerequisites (see Prerequisites section above).
Next, build the Vagrant VM according to the instructions in the arkcase-ce repository: https://github.com/ArkCase/arkcase-ce.
After the box is up, the following URLs should work from your browser; be aware that ArkCase uses a self-signed root TLS certificate, so you will have to accept the browser warning about the unrecognized root certificate.
https://arkcase-ce.local/share
https://arkcase-ce.local/pentaho
https://arkcase-ce.local/VirtualViewerJavaHTML5 (expect a 503 error from this URL)
First, find the IP address of your VirtualBox network. From the VirtualBox GUI, open File / Host Network Manager. Most likely the IP address you need is the one for the vboxnet1 adapter, which will be shown as something like 172.28.128.1/24. You want the part before the /24.
Next, ssh into the VM: vagrant ssh (from the same folder as the Vagrantfile).
Next, become the root user: sudo su -
Next, view the contents of /etc/hosts: cat /etc/hosts. It will display something like this:
[vagrant@arkcase-ce ~]$ cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 arkcase-ce.local arkcase-ce
127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4
::1 localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6
127.0.0.1 arkcase-ce.local
127.0.0.1 arkcase-host
127.0.0.1 acm-activemq
Note that the host arkcase-host has IP address of 127.0.0.1. You want to replace it with the IP address you identified above.
Run this command: sed 's|127.0.0.1 arkcase-host|172.28.128.1|g' /etc/hosts, being careful to replace 172.28.128.1 with the IP address you identified above. It will output the updated text, but will not actually update /etc/hosts:
[root@arkcase-ce ~]# sed 's|127.0.0.1 arkcase-host|172.28.128.1 arkcase-host|g' /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 arkcase-ce.local arkcase-ce
127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4
::1 localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6
127.0.0.1 arkcase-ce.local
172.28.128.1 arkcase-host
127.0.0.1 acm-activemq
If it seems OK (that is: if the old arkcase-host line with 127.0.0.1 is gone and the new arkcase-host line with the right IP address is there, then you can update /etc/hosts itself: sed -i 's|127.0.0.1 arkcase-host|172.28.128.1 arkcase-host|g' /etc/hosts.
Now you can cat /etc/hosts again and it should look OK.
Finally, restart httpd:
systemctl restart httpdNow you can exit out of your ssh session in the Vagrant VM.
Clone this repository to a folder of your choice.
cd to the root folder of this repository; then run mvn -DskipITs clean install. This will run the unit tests and build the war file. It will take a few minutes.
ArkCase requires a configuration folder which is housed in another GitHub repository: https://github.com/ArkCase/.arkcase; follow the instructions at this link to setup the configuration folder.
Starting with version 3.3.1, ArkCase requires a separate configuration server, based on Spring Cloud Config Server (more info here: https://spring.io/projects/spring-cloud-config). To start the config server, take these steps:
- Download the most recent config-server.jar file from here: https://github.com/ArkCase/acm-config-server/releases
- Start the server process with this command:
java -Dserver.port=9999 -jar config-server-0.0.1.jar, replacing0.0.1with the version you downloaded.
ArkCase expects the config server to run at port 9999, as shown above.
Make sure the Tomcat native connector library is being used.
- MacOS: open terminal, issue the command
brew install tomcat-native, and follow any directions you see at the end... Of course you must already havebrew; see https://brew.sh/ if you don't already have it. - Windows: download from https://tomcat.apache.org/download-native.cgi.
- Linux: Information on building for Linux is available from the same URL (https://tomcat.apache.org/download-native.cgi).
In your Tomcat 9 installation, edit the conf/server.xml file, and add the following connector, below the existing connector for port 8080:
<Connector port="8843"
maxThreads="150" SSLEnabled="true" secure="true" scheme="https"
maxHttpHeaderSize="32768"
connectionTimeout="40000"
useBodyEncodingForURI="true"
address="0.0.0.0">
<UpgradeProtocol className="org.apache.coyote.http2.Http2Protocol" />
<SSLHostConfig protocols="TLSv1.2" certificateVerification="none">
<Certificate certificateFile="${user.home}/.arkcase/acm/private/acm-arkcase.crt"
certificateKeyFile="${user.home}/.arkcase/acm/private/acm-arkcase.rsa.pem"
certificateChainFile="${user.home}/.arkcase/acm/private/arkcase-ca.crt"
type="RSA" />
</SSLHostConfig>
</Connector>Also, search for the text Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener", and make sure to add the useAprConnector="true" attribute, so it ends like this:
<Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener" SSLEngine="on" useAprConnector="true"/>Create the file bin/setenv.sh, mark it executable, and set the contents as the following, being careful to set the correct path to the Tomcat native library:
#!/bin/sh
### REPLACE ${user.home} with the actual path to your home folder, e.g. /Users/dmiller
export JAVA_OPTS="-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -Duser.timezone=GMT -Djavax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword=password -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword=password -Djavax.net.ssl.keyStore=${user.home}/.arkcase/acm/private/arkcase.ks -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=${user.home}/.arkcase/acm/private/arkcase.ts -Dspring.profiles.active=ldap -Dacm.configurationserver.propertyfile=${user.home}/.arkcase/acm/conf.yml -Xms1024M -Xmx1024M"
export NODE_ENV=development
export CATALINA_OPTS="$CATALINA_OPTS -Djava.library.path=(PATH TO THE TOMCAT NATIVE LIBRARY)
# MacOS Example: export CATALINA_OPTS=/usr/local/opt/tomcat-native/lib"
export CATALINA_PID=$CATALINA_HOME/temp/catalina.pidAgain, be sure to replace ${user.home} in the above script, with the actual full path to your home folder.
Now you should be able to start Tomcat: $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/startup.sh.
To shutdown Tomcat: $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh -force.
The result of the command mvn -DskipITs clean install (described above) is the war file acm-standard-applications/acm-law-enforcement/target/acm-law-enforcement-(version).war, where (version) is the Maven version string.
Copy this file to $TOMCAT_HOME, rename it to arkcase.war, and move the arkcase.war to $TOMCAT_HOME/webapps. Then, watch the Tomcat log file ($TOMCAT_HOME/logs/catalina.out). The first startup will take 5 - 10 minutes.
If you see any errors that prevent application startup (in other words: if after Tomcat has started, you get a 404 error from https://arkcase-ce.local/arkcase, raise a GitHub issue in this repository.
Once you see that Tomcat has started successfully, you should be able to open https://arkcase-ce.local/arkcase in your browser.
When you open ArkCase in your browser, you will have to accept the warning about an unrecognized, self-signed root certificate. The certificate is signed by a self-signed ArkCase certificate authority. Follow the right procedure for your operating system to trust this certificate.
MacOS: A good guide is here, https://www.accuweaver.com/2014/09/19/make-chrome-accept-a-self-signed-certificate-on-osx/
Once you see the ArkCase login page, you can log in with the default administrator account. User arkcase-admin@arkcase.org, password @rKc@3e.
ArkCase is a Maven project with a standard Maven folder layout. You can load it into your chosen IDE or editor in whichever way is supported by your editor; if your IDE supports starting and launching a war file, this should work in the normal way. Detailed steps to configure IDE integration is beyond the scope of this guide.
ArkCase developers have used IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse. Visual Studio Code is usable as a code editor, but you have to deploy ArkCase manually as described above; so far VS Code seems unable to deploy ArkCase from within itself.