proof is in the pudding, as they say, but sounds like I have learned a variety of things this morning:
1. "Since Alfresco Installer was discontinued from Alfresco 5.2, this project provides a command line installer for Alfresco Community 6.1 and Alfresco Community 6.2 to be used in Docker Compose installations." -- not sure the background on this decision, but paired with the other information, seems as though I may have been mistaken about the #Alfresco community.
2. The Alfresco forums are super useful.
3. Even if you know nothing about a project, it might be worth checking their bug tracker. Of course, you need to know enough about the product to understand the bugs, which I probably didn't have when I started this project. Once I got confident enough in my understanding to post on the forum though, I was almost certainly qualified to go bug hunting at that point.
It's funny, because bug reports is where I generally start. I guess the difference here was I wasn't looking for an easy out for a support ticket. I guess when I am doing my own infrastructure work, I should keep some of those fire fighting habits.
That said, since we support Alfresco, as well as #solr, and #Tomcat, in the long term it is probably good that I spent some time beating my head against the wall with it. (we never get Alfresco tickets, but we do get Tomcat tickets)