Configuration with MariaDB Database

As working example you can watch on travis configuration test in uPortal-start/.travis/conf/database/mariadb/

Step 1: MariaDB server setup

Edit the file /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/60-server.cnf. (Debian 9) In the [mysqld] part add the following items :

default-storage-engine=INNODB
lower_case_table_names=1
innodb-large-prefix=1
innodb_file_format=Barracuda
innodb_file_format_check=1
innodb_file_format_max=Barracuda
innodb_file_per_table=1
innodb_strict_mode=ON

innodb_buffer_pool_size=2G
innodb_data_home_dir=/var/lib/mysql/
innodb_data_file_path=ibdata1:100M:autoextend
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=1
innodb_log_file_size=256M
innodb_log_buffer_size=64M

NOTE: From mariaDB 10.1.35 add this configuration:

innodb_default_row_format=dynamic

This permit to create by default all tables with the row_format=dynamic if not provided.

In addition you can indicate these properties to define UTF-8 as default, this is optional if you create your your database with the character set uft8mb4 and the associated collation (see below).

character-set-server  = utf8mb4
collation-server      = utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci

Step 2: Configure the user and database

Connect to the database server.

CREATE USER 'uportal'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'uportal';
create database uportal CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON uportal.* TO 'uportal'@'localhost';
# If you want to install portlets on a specific database
# create database portlet CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci;
# GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON portlets.* TO 'uportal'@'localhost';

With MariaDb and Mysql the default character set should be set to utf8mb4 instead of utf8 as the mysql UTF-8 encoding is only a support of 3-bytes UTF-8 unicode encoding. The 3-bytes part is not a full UTF-8 support, this won’t support Asian characters and emoticons files. See here for more details

Also the collation utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci is a new best algorithm for ordering UTF-8 values, but you can stay on ‘utf8_unicode_ci’ see the mysql documentation for details

Step 3: Configure Uportal

Edit uPortal-start/gradle.properties

mysqldbVersion=5.1.45

Edit uPortal-start/overlays/build.gradle

dependencies {
        /*
         * Add additional JDBC driver jars to the 'jdbc' configuration below;
         * do not remove the hsqldb driver jar that is already listed.
         */
        jdbc "org.hsqldb:hsqldb:${hsqldbVersion}"
        jdbc "mysql:mysql-connector-java:${mysqldbVersion}"
        

Edit uPortal-start/etc/portal/global.properties

In the Database Connection section

hibernate.connection.driver_class=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
hibernate.connection.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/portlets
hibernate.connection.username=uportal
hibernate.connection.password=uportal
hibernate.connection.validationQuery=select 1
hibernate.dialect = org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL5InnoDBDialect

You should copy/paste this configuration for each customized database portlet/uPortal context see global data source documentation

NOTE: Before mariaDB 10.1.35 using the Dialect org.apereo.portal.utils.MySQL5InnoDBCompressedDialect was needed if you didn’t configured your mariaDB server with the default row_format or equivalent

NOTE: Depending on the version of hibernate used and the version of the database server it may be necessary to select an appropriate Dialect see here (Be careful to select the correct version according to the tag)

Step 4 : Initialization of the Database

./gradlew dataInit

Step 5 : Deployment of uPortal

./gradlew tomcatDeploy