Details on how-to setup AEM as a Service on Linux. Used CentOS 7 and Ubuntu 17.04 as an example.

1. AEM Installed on your server. Copy the path of the install (e.g: /mnt/crx)
2. Java (atleast JRE) installed (To test if java is installed and the version, run this command java -version)
3. Start AEM (e.g java -jar cq-quickstart-author-p4502.jar) once. This will generate all the necessary folders, especially /mnt/crx/crx-quickstart/bin that is required by the scripts.
4. Create a user who will have access to the service. (e.g: aem)

1. You will need root access
2. Create user aem and add to sudoers group
   • adduser aem
   • usermod -aG wheel aem
   • Test the user
     • su - aem
     • sudo ls -la /root [This is accessible by root only]
   • If setting up publisher, add the following lines to .bash_profile/.profile:
     • export CQ_RUNMODE=publish
     • export CQ_PORT=4503
   • If setting up multiple environments CQ_RUNMODE can be modified to include them:
     • export CQ_RUNMODE=publish,dev
3. Create these 2 files (Get the contents of the files based on the OS. Under /centos or /ubutnu in this project)
   • aem
   • aem.service
4. Open aem script file and update the below
   • AEM_ROOT (e.g: /aem/publish is the root, where /aem/publish/crx-quickstart is the full path)
   • AEM_USER (e.g: aem)
5. SCP these files to the server
   • Copy aem to /usr/bin
     • Example: From terminal on your desktop $ scp <filename> [email protected]:/usr/bin/aem
   • Copy aem.service to /etc/systemd/system (if Ubuntu - /etc/systemd/system)
     • Example: From terminal on your desktop $ scp <filename> [email protected]:/etc/systemd/system/aem.service
6. SSH to your server
   • ssh [email protected]
7. Give permissions to the files
   • sudo chmod u rwx /usr/bin/aem
   • sudo chmod u rw /etc/systemd/system/aem.service
8. Update
   • cd /etc/systemd/system
   • sudo systemctl enable aem.service
9. You can restart the server or run the below commands to start AEM. Make sure you run Pre-requisite Step 2 before running this command.

• Start AEM - sudo service aem start
• Restart AEM - sudo service aem restart
• Stop AEM - sudo service aem stop
• Check Status of the service sudo service aem status

• Start AEM - sudo systemctl start aem
• Restart AEM - sudo systemctl restart aem
• Stop AEM - sudo systemctl stop aem
• Check Status of AEM sudo systemctl status aem

There are several ways we can test if AEM is running with the above commands

1. Run the command ps -ef | grep java , you should see something like this

   • root 12958 1 5 20:39 ? 00:02:41 java -server -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=256M -Djava.awt.headless=true -Dsling.run.modes=author,crx3,crx3tar -Djava.locale.providers=CLDR,JRE,SPI -jar crx-quickstart/app/cq-quickstart-6.4.0-standalone-quickstart.jar start -c crx-quickstart -i launchpad -p 4502 -Dsling.properties=conf/sling.properties

2. Check if port 4502 is being used sudo lsof -i -P -n | grep LISTEN

3. Test AEM in another command/terminal window using cUrl as curl -I http://localhost:4502

4. Test AEM in browser http://<vm-ip-address>:4502

1. Download the tar.gz file "https://download.oracle.com/otn/java/jdk/8u231-b11/5b13a193868b4bf28bcb45c792fce896/jdk-8u 231-linux-x64.tar.gz" to your local machine. Downloading to your linux VM maybe not possible, as the above url needs a login.
2. Copy the file to the server using SCP
3. Make a directory: mkdir /opt/java
4. Install and copy: sudo tar -zxf jdk-8u231-linux-x64.tar.gz -C /opt/java/
5. Update your environment to allow Java for all users. Run this command sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /opt/java/jdk1.8.0_231/bin/java 1
6. Add path to ".bashrc". Open to edit sudo nano ~/.bashrc

   • Add these lines to the end of the file:

     export JAVA_HOME=/opt/java/jdk1.8.0_231

     export PATH=${PATH}:${JAVA_HOME}/bin

1. If the command shows active and still AEM does not load (On a browser http://localhost:4502) then check the AEM logs. Path for the log file: /<aem-folder>/crx-quickstart/logs/stdout.log

1. The example above was tested on CentOS 7 and Ubuntu 17x, 18x
2. AEM 6.3 version was used. Although the above process should work for AEM 6.x