Loading...

Moving your Yellowfin application

Moving your Yellowfin application

There may be several reasons for moving your Yellowfin Application into a different location – you might be running out of space on the current disk drive or you just want to change the name of your Yellowfin folder.

I often receive calls from clients who would like to change the name of their Yellowfin folder during upgrades. This usually happens when upgrading to a new major version.

For example, a client initially installed Yellowfin into a folder with the version number - something like “c:\Yellowfin 7.3”. When the client then upgrades to Yellowfin 7.4, Yellowfin will not change the folder name and you will end up with a folder that is not reflecting the correct version number.

Let me show you how to prevent this from happening. In the example below, I am going to rename my Yellowfin Application folder from “c:\Yellowfin 7.3” to “c:\Yellowfin 7.4”.

These are the steps to follow:

  1. Create a backup of your current Yellowfin environment (just in case – you never know what might happen!). It is always a good idea to do this if you are going to make changes to the backend.

  2. Rename the Yellowfin folder from "c:\Yellowfin 7.3" to "c:\Yellowfin 7.4".

  3. Update the path to the “yellowfin.war” file in the “root.xml” file located in the "[Yellowfin Installation directory\appserver\conf\Catalina\localhost”. You can open this file using any text editor.

    root.xml

  4. Update the path to the “web-jsps.xml” file in the “web.xml” file located in the "[Yellowfin Installation directory\appserver\webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF”.

    web.xml

  5. You might need to update the connection string to your Yellowfin repository depending on the data source that you are connecting too. Make sure that your “JDBCUrl” parameter is still valid. This is also updated in the “web.xml” file.

    web.xml - Datasource

  6. Locate the “CATALINA_HOME” variable in the "catalina.bat" file located in your "[Yellowfin Installation directory]/appserver/bin" directory and replace the current value with your new Yellowfin path.

    catalina.bat

If you are starting Yellowfin manually via the “startup.bat” file, you are done and can skip the next steps.

If you run Yellowfin as a Windows Service, you still need to complete the following steps:

  1. Open the command prompt and navigate to your "[Yellowfin Installation directory]/appserver/bin" directory.

    Command prompt

  2. Remove the current Yellowfin service by entering the following command and press enter:

    "service remove Yellowfin"

  3. Re-create the Yellowfin service by entering the following command:

    "service install Yellowfin”

    This will re-create the Yellowfin service using the Catalina.bat file as input.

Yellowfin should now start successfully.