Enabling CRXDE in AEM

I am writing this post to share my findings on enabling CRXDE when the AEM is started in the production run mode (i.e. with nosamplecontent mode).

Please refer the below URL to know how to start the AEM instance in the production run mode where all the security features are enabled.
https://docs.adobe.com/docs/en/aem/6-2/administer/security/production-ready.html


After this if in any case, CRXDE needs to be enabled, then the usual way is to verify if the below bundles are active and running

1. CRXDE support bundle (Adobe Granite CRXDE Lite - com.adobe.granite.crxde-lite)
2. WebDav bundle, (Apache Sling Simple WebDAV Access to repositories - org.apache.sling.jcr.webdav)
3. DavEx bundle (Apache Sling DavEx Access to repositories - org.apache.sling.jcr.davex)

By just making sure having this active would not have CRXDE enabled.

You would also find that there would be 404 for the below URL hit
/crx/server/crx.default/jcr:root/.1.json

At this point, you would have also verified the ACL's permissions for the admin user and might be thinking where is the missing link.

The catch here is to do one more step for enabling CRXDE. That is - Go to configuration manager and edit the below configuration
"Apache Sling DavEx servlet" to have the "Root Path" value as "/crx/server" instead of "/server".

Verify now in CRXDE if you could see all the structure in place!!!

Note:

Below link would lead you to /system/console/components but you would not find this in there and you have to visit the "configMgr" as noted above for having the CRXDE enabled.

https://docs.adobe.com/docs/en/aem/6-2/administer/security/security-checklist/enabling-crxde-lite.html