Working on this fresh Appian 7.8 install I seem to be stuck at a certain point.

below are the other two files that didn't come through on my original post

standalone.xml

server.log

I think Oracle Express starts something on port 8080. You need to change the port it uses. stackoverflow.com/.../change-oracle-port-from-port-8080

Thanks, you are correct that was interfering and the article seemed to do the job and the login disappears. The applications still don't deploy but at least there was one hurdle cleared.

I just get a "Page Not Found" error when attempting to access designer now. Looking in the server logs it looks like not everything gets deployed completely and there is still an authentication error. Here is an example of an issue where JBoss attempts to deploy:

04:10:15,699 INFO [org.jboss.as.server.deployment] (MSC service thread 1-2) JBAS015876: Starting deployment of "null" (runtime-name: "ss.war")
04:10:19,447 WARN [org.jboss.as.server.deployment] (MSC service thread 1-2) JBAS015960: Class Path entry jaxb-api.jar in /C:/appian/search-server/ss.ear/ss.war/WEB-INF/lib/jaxb-impl-2.1.10.jar does not point to a valid jar for a Class-Path reference.
04:10:19,449 WARN [org.jboss.as.server.deployment] (MSC service thread 1-2) JBAS015960: Class Path entry activation.jar in /C:/appian/search-server/ss.ear/ss.war/WEB-INF/lib/jaxb-impl-2.1.10.jar does not point to a valid jar for a Class-Path reference.

It looks like something funny with the class path and I'm not having luck finding this setting.

The other type of error I get is this datasource authentication error:

04:10:19,899 ERROR [org.jboss.as.connector.subsystems.datasources.AbstractDataSourceService$AS7DataSourceDeployer] (MSC service thread 1-2) Exception during createSubject()PBOX000016: Access denied: authentication failed: java.lang.SecurityException: PBOX000016: Access denied: authentication failed
          at org.jboss.security.plugins.JBossSecuritySubjectFactory.createSubject(JBossSecuritySubjectFactory.java:84)
          at org.jboss.jca.deployers.common.AbstractDsDeployer$1.run(AbstractDsDeployer.java:1078)
          at org.jboss.jca.deployers.common.AbstractDsDeployer$1.run(AbstractDsDeployer.java:1073)
          at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) [rt.jar:1.7.0_71]
          at org.jboss.jca.deployers.common.AbstractDsDeployer.createSubject(AbstractDsDeployer.java:1072)
          at org.jboss.jca.deployers.common.AbstractDsDeployer.deployXADataSource(AbstractDsDeployer.java:885)
          at org.jboss.jca.deployers.common.AbstractDsDeployer.createObjectsAndInjectValue(AbstractDsDeployer.java:338)
          at org.jboss.as.connector.subsystems.datasources.AbstractDataSourceService$AS7DataSourceDeployer.deploy(AbstractDataSourceService.java:316)
          at org.jboss.as.connector.subsystems.datasources.AbstractDataSourceService.start(AbstractDataSourceService.java:120)
          at org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceControllerImpl$StartTask.startService(ServiceControllerImpl.java:1980)
          at org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceControllerImpl$StartTask.run(ServiceControllerImpl.java:1913)
          at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145) [rt.jar:1.7.0_71]
          at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615) [rt.jar:1.7.0_71]
          at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745) [rt.jar:1.7.0_71]

So after conferring with my team (and a little more research on the forum here) I had three main issues with my initial install, all of which were related to JBoss. I'm documenting this as so that someone who is relatively new to Appian as I am might benefit.

1) Installation of the Spring module. Many of the JBoss errors I got were because I didn't have the commonJ copied in the right place. The install documentation is correct in saying to copy the contents into the JBoss modules folder but what would be a little more clear (to someone like myself who is early in the learning curve with JBoss) is to give the folder paths or perhaps provide a note. After some close inspection and trial/error I figured it out but it tripped me up.

2) Had a lot of trouble getting JBoss to pick up my Appian-ds.xml to get my datasource dropped in. In the end I placed my datasource settings right into my standalone.xml and that ended up working. I took this step only because this is my my own sandbox system for dev purposes. If you find yourself in this situation with a pre-prod or prod environment then it's likely something to get support involved.

3) I had overlooked going through the custom.properties file. What I did was take one from another post on the forum and sync up the settings--obviously making things specific to my environment such as server and port names, datasources, etc

4) Port conflicts. I am running oracle xe as my rdbms and it runs a service on port 8080. I had to change this port setting (easily done and there is another article on this forum discussing it). The install documentation does talk about this in the troubleshooting.

Again, the above were what I ran into on my first time around. My system is up and humming now.

Hope this helps!