The CoreMedia CMS provides a series of server utility programs for information, adjustment and optimization of the server processes. Basically there are four categories of such tools:

Information

The informational tools allow you to inspect the current state of the CoreMedia CMS. You can dump all kinds of server objects, such as resources, running processes or used licenses. Furthermore, you can query system information about the CoreMedia CMS itself (esp. the version), which becomes important whenever you submit a support request.

Operation

With the operational tools you control the CoreMedia CMS. This includes cleaning up the repository, uploading new workflow definitions and maintaining the database.

Repository

The repository tools allow you to execute actions normally performed by the editors, like approving and publishing resources or starting workflows. They are emergency tools, needed only in exceptional cases to fix the repository immediately when something went wrong.

General usage

All server utilities are implemented as cm programs as described in the Operations Basics, that is you run them from the command line with cm, cmw or cm64. Most of the tools open a session and therefore need a user who is specified by three command line options -u, -d and -p.

The CoreMedia system supports gRPC and CORBA for internal communication. While Content Servers always offer both protocols for clients to connect, server utilities can be configured to use either gRPC or CORBA. The protocol can be chosen freely on each start of a component. Currently, CORBA is the default protocol.

To activate gRPC on a server utility, export environment variable REPOSITORY_USEGRPC set to true or precede the command with a local variable definition. In any case you have to specify the gRPC endpoint of the Content Server to connect to with option -g and the HTTP base URI with option --http-base-uri. Example:

> REPOSITORY_USEGRPC=true \
   cm start -u admin -p admin \
   -g content-management-server:40165 \
   --http-base-uri http://content-management-server:40180 \
   1

Note

If a server utility needs to communicate with the Workflow Server, the Content Management Server's IOR URL must be given, too. This is due to the fact that, with release 2512.0, the Workflow Server does not yet offer gRPC services to its clients. Activating gRPC on server utilities connecting to the Workflow Server won't do any harm as long as these are of release 2512.0, too. Future clients, though, will fail to connect to that Workflow Server if gRPC is active on them.

Activating gRPC on server utilities that communicate with the Workflow Server currently requires the -urloption. Example:

> REPOSITORY_USEGRPC=true \
 cm dump -u admin -p admin \
 -url http://content-management-server:40180/ior \
 -g content-management-server:40165 \
 --http-base-uri http://content-management-server:40180 \
 -pn Synchronization

Alternatively to the command line options -g, --http-base-uri and -url, you may also use environment variables. Example:

> REPOSITORY_USEGRPC=true \
   REPOSITORY_URL=http://content-management-server:40180/ior \
   SPRING_GRPC_CLIENT_CHANNELS_CAP_ADDRESS=content-management-server:40165 \
   REPOSITORY_HTTPBASEURI=http://content-management-server:40180 \
   cm dump -u admin -p admin -pn Synchronization

These options are common for most of the server utilities, and will therefore not be mentioned in detail for each tool. Note that most server utilities require administrative permissions and thus can only be run with users of administrative groups.

Protecting Passwords

A password that is provided via the command line might be visible in the shell history or in the list of running processes. A password provided via an environment variable might accidentally be passed to other commands, if the environment variable is set in a long-running shell or even during shell initialization.

If you must not or cannot enter the password manually, consider setting the environment variable in a wrapper script. Preferably the password is retrieved automatically from a secure password vault. If the password is stored in the shell script, the shell script must not be readable by other users.

If you are not sure how to use a utility, just start it without any options to print out a summary of its usage.

General usage in a Windows 64-bit environment

The server utilities can be started using the cm64.exe command in a Windows 64-bit environment with a JVM 64-bit, as described in the Operations Basics.