Template:ContextUserAndLogs

Creating contexts and users

Now as the whole setup is complete and you already should get a login screen when accessing the server with a webbrowser, we have to setup a context and a default user as the last step of this tutorial.

The mapping defaultcontext will allow you to set this context as the default one of the entire system so that users which will be created within this context can login into Open-Xchange Server without specifying their domain at the login screen. Only one context can be specified as defaultcontext. The oxadmin user that will be created by this command is the default admin of the created context. This account will gather additional functions that are also described in the administration manual. The context id parameter must to be unique and numeric, otherwise the server will complain when you try to create a context. New contexts must be created by the oxadminmaster user, user accounts inside a context are created with the credentials of the contexts oxadmin account. The access-combination-name property defines the set of available modules and functions for users of the context.

$ /opt/open-xchange/sbin/createcontext -A oxadminmaster -P admin_master_password -c 1 \
-u oxadmin -d "Context Admin" -g Admin -s User -p admin_password -L defaultcontext \
-e oxadmin@example.com -q 1024 --access-combination-name=all

Create a user for testing purposes (Make sure the password you use here for the user is the same password as your email account or you will not be able to use the email module until it is set right):

$ /opt/open-xchange/sbin/createuser -c 1 -A oxadmin -P admin_password -u testuser \
-d "Test User" -g Test -s User -p secret -e testuser@example.com \
--imaplogin testuser --imapserver 127.0.0.1 --smtpserver 127.0.0.1

Now connect to the server with a webbrowser and login using the credentials testuser / secret.

If you need to migrate a batch of users and contexts at once, check the CSV Batch Import documentation page.

Log files and issue tracking

Default logging mechanism

Whenever unexpected or erroneous behavior takes place, it will be logged depending on the configured loglevel. All logfiles are stored at the operating systems default location. Events triggered by the Open-Xchange Groupware services are logged to a rotating file open-xchange.log, events triggered by the Open-Xchange Administration service are logged to open-xchange-admin.log. Those files are the very first place to monitor.

$ tail -f -n200 /var/log/open-xchange/open-xchange.log.0

Alternative logging mechanism using Syslog

Apart from the default file logging mechanism, Open-Xchange supports logging via syslog in using Apache log4j which is a standard framework for application message and error logging. Using log4j makes it possible to directly log to a local or remote syslog daemon or other services. Log4j is highly customizable, please see the Apache log4j [1] project websites for more information. Note, the default logging locations at /var/log/open-xchange will not be used anymore when installing the log4j bundles, please make sure to check out the configuration guide.

Performance & Tuning Tips

Depending on your setup and the user accounts, it´s often helpful to know, how to get a better performance from the complete system. This section will try to assist you, how to tune the components within an OX setup, before you need to install a second server, add more RAM, add new CPU to existing servers.

MySQL

Since OX itself used very specific features from MySQL like InnoDB instead of MyISAM as DB Engine, it´s often needed, how to increase performance of the OX databases. In general, you should always monitor your MySQL system via tools like "munin", to see when your system reaches it´s limits. Once, you recognized, the system responds more and more slowly, you start to read and research on the internet how to change your mysql configuration, specially, the my.cnf file. But due to the fact, that nearly every system is different in regards of hardware etc. you cannot just copy&paste existing configurations. At this point, a tool called "mysqltuner.pl" can help you. MySQLTuner is a script written in Perl that will assist you with your MySQL configuration and make recommendations for increased performance and stability. Within seconds, it will display statistics about your MySQL installation and the areas where it can be improved. To work with this tool, you need unrestricted read access to the MySQL server (OS root access is recommended). Just download and execute as shown below, and modify your existing my.cnf configuration file.

IMPORTANT INFO: The MySQL system must run for several days, to gather statistics and informations about queries etc. from OX. After these days, you should execute mysqltuner.pl script. It does not work if you run it directly after installing an OX/MySQL setup. You can force traffic to OX while writing automatic testcases or jmeter plans.

As already said, this is just ONE way to analyze MySQL systems. You can also check MYSQL.com for a consultant service or similar.

$ wget http://mysqltuner.pl/mysqltuner.pl

Make the PERL script executable:

 $ chmod +x mysqltuner.pl

Execute the PERL script:

 $ ./mysqltuner.pl

If prompted, enter your MySQL credentials and read carefully through the complete output of the script. Now you have very good informations, how to change your mysql system.