14.1 JBoss | CCNP: Building Cisco Multilayer Switched Networks Study Guide (642-811)

Although numerous commercial J2EE server offerings are available, few of them (as of this writing) have releases built specifically for Mac OS X. Many have Linux and Unix versions of their products, but Mac OS X offerings remain sparse. This situation is expected to change as Mac OS X gains momentum, but for now it creates a problem for enterprise Java developers. To deal with this problem, you need to obtain a server that can be built from source, and therefore optimized for Mac OS X. Since commercial offerings don't make source available, JBoss quickly rises to the top of the heap. Freely available and completely open source, JBoss works beautifully on Mac OS X. This chapter will show you how to get it running.

14.1.1 Downloading a Release

You can download releases of JBoss from http://www.jboss.org/. The release used here is 3.0.4, which uses the default JBoss web server.

Some releases of JBoss are bundled with the Tomcat web server, which functions as detailed in the last chapter. You are welcome to use that release, and it works well on Mac OS X. However, this chapter assumes the "pure" JBoss release.

You should download the JBoss-3.0.4.zip file, weighing in at 28.7 MB. This release of JBoss includes a web (HTTP) server, a JSP and servlet container, and support for EJB, CMP 2.0, RMI, IIOP, Clustering, JTS, and JMX.

Acronym Frenzy

Lest all the acronyms overwhelm you, here is a brief rundown of some of the common ones in J2EE:

CMP: Container Managed Persistence, a feature of EJB that allows persisting data to a database
EJB: Enterprise JavaBeans
IIOP: Internet Inter-Orb Protocol, a more traditional protocol for communication over distributed architectures
J2EE: Java 2 Enterprise Edition
JMX: Java Management Extensions, an API that allows other Java applications to interface with a J2EE server programmatically through a standard set of coding paradigms
JSP: JavaServer Pages
JTS: Java Transaction Service, the Java API for handling transactions, committals, and rollbacks of database communication
RMI: Remote Method Invocation, which allows remote components to be interacted with as if they were local objects

14.1.2 Installation

Assuming you've downloaded the JBoss-3.0.4.zip file into your home directory ( ~ ), execute the commands below to expand the JBoss distribution:

 [Localhost:~] wiverson% ls -l jboss-3.0.4.zip -rw-r--r--  1 wiverson  staff  28711934 Nov 20 16:33 jboss-3.0.4.zip [Localhost:~] wiverson% sudo mkdir /usr/local/jboss [Localhost:~] wiverson% sudo chown  wiverson  :staff /usr/local/jboss [Localhost:~] wiverson% cd /usr/local/jboss [Localhost:/usr/local/jboss] wiverson% cp ~/jboss-3.0.4.zip . [Localhost:/usr/local/jboss] wiverson% unzip jboss-3.0.4.zip  Archive:  jboss-3.0.4.zip    creating: jboss-3.0.4/    creating: jboss-3.0.4/bin/    creating: jboss-3.0.4/client/    creating: jboss-3.0.4/docs/    creating: jboss-3.0.4/docs/dtd/    creating: jboss-3.0.4/docs/examples/    creating: jboss-3.0.4/docs/examples/jca/    creating: jboss-3.0.4/lib/    creating: jboss-3.0.4/server/      ...     omitted for brevity     ...   inflating: jboss-3.0.4/docs/tests/overview-frame.html     inflating: jboss-3.0.4/docs/tests/overview-summary.html     inflating: jboss-3.0.4/docs/tests/stylesheet.css   [Localhost:/usr/local/jboss] wiverson% cd /usr/local/jboss/jboss-3.0.4 [Localhost:local/jboss/jboss-3.0.4] wiverson% mv ./* ../ [Localhost:local/jboss/jboss-3.0.4] wiverson% cd .. [Localhost:/usr/local/jboss] wiverson% rmdir jboss-3.0.4 [Localhost:/usr/local/jboss] wiverson% ls bin             docs            lib client          jboss-3.0.4.zip server

You'll need to replace the bolded username ( wiverson ) with the username you want to run JBoss as. This name could be a special user account you created just for this purpose, or your own user account. When you are done, you'll have a complete JBoss installation in the /usr/local/jboss/ directory.

Using NetInfo to create a "homeless" user is a good way to protect JBoss user accounts. (Refer to O'Reilly's Mac OS X for Unix Geeks for more information.)

14.1.3 Starting JBoss

To start JBoss, simply enter the following command:

 [Localhost:/usr/local/jboss] wiverson%  /usr/local/jboss/bin/run.sh ===============================================================================   JBoss Bootstrap Environment   JBOSS_HOME: /usr/local/jboss   JAVA: java   JAVA_OPTS:  -Dprogram.name=run.sh   CLASSPATH: /usr/local/jboss/bin/run.jar:/lib/tools.jar =============================================================================== 18:09:09,910 INFO  [Server] JBoss Release: JBoss-3.0.4 CVSTag=JBoss_3_0_4 18:09:10,091 INFO  [Server] Home Dir: /usr/local/jboss 18:09:10,093 INFO  [Server] Home URL: file:/usr/local/jboss/ 18:09:10,096 INFO  [Server] Library URL: file:/usr/local/jboss/lib/ 18:09:10,105 INFO  [Server] Patch URL: null 18:09:10,107 INFO  [Server] Server Name: default ... omitted for brevity ... 18:09:53,489 INFO  [jbossweb] Started WebApplicationContext[/jmx- console,file:/usr/local/jboss/server/default/deploy/jmx-console.war/] 18:09:53,706 INFO  [jbossweb] successfully deployed file:/usr/local/jboss/ server/default/deploy/jmx-console.war/ to /jmx-console 18:09:53,709 INFO  [MainDeployer] Deployed package: file:/usr/local/jboss/ server/default/deploy/jmx-console.war/ 18:09:53,719 INFO  [URLDeploymentScanner] Started 18:09:53,721 INFO  [MainDeployer] Deployed package: file:/usr/local/jboss/ server/default/conf/jboss-service.xml 18:09:53,838 INFO  [Server] JBoss (MX MicroKernel) [3.0.4 Date:200211021607]  Started in 0m:43s:637ms

After a lot of messages scroll past, you will see a status message along the lines of:

 [Server] JBoss (MX MicroKernel) [3.0.4 Date:200211021607] Started in 0m:22s:871ms

This indicates that JBoss is now running. To verify that it is working properly, open the administrative console at http://localhost:8080/jmx-console/ . You should see something similar to Figure 14-1.

Figure 14-1. The JBoss administrative console

JBoss ships with three different configurations: "minimal," "default," and "all." These configurations are stored in the directory /usr/local/jboss/server/ . When you start up the server with the default run.sh command, you imply that you wish to use the /usr/local/jboss/server/default directory as your server directory.

This is particularly relevant if you want to deploy JBoss with the absolute minimal server configuration. In that event, copy the minimal configuration directory, and then add library and configuration data to support your application as you add functionality.