Summary

You have explored the architecture of Geronimo in this chapter. Geronimo consists of a small kernel that supplies GBean components with configuration management, manageability, and lifecycle management services.

A related group of GBeans configured together is called a module. Modules are defined and configured in Geronimo using deployment plans.

The personality of a Geronimo server is determined by the set of modules that are assembled together to create the base server. This set of modules is called an assembly. The default personality of the Geronimo binary distribution is a J2EE server personality. It is possible to modify and rebuild a custom assembly for your own purposes. Chapter 18 (a bonus downloadable chapter available at www.progeronimo.com) describes the procedure.

All the directories included in the full J2EE server distribution of Geronimo 1.1 distribution have been explored in this chapter. Among other directories, you have discovered the following:

• The repository where the component servers (and their dependent libraries) are kept. This is also the location where Geronimo maintains its configuration store - keeping a persistent image of the configurations of installed and deployed modules.

• The doc directory.

• The lib directory where Geronimo maintains the library APIs that it needs to start the server.

• The var directory where server modules place working files. The config.xml file in the config subdirectory can be used to modify modules’ configuration between Geronimo server startups.

• The schema directory where the XML schemas for all of Geronimo’s deployment plans and standard J2EE deployment descriptors reside.

You now have sufficient conceptual background to start production work with Geronimo. Chapter 6 begins tool coverage, and subsequent chapters will provide a cookbook approach to configuring different modules for the Geronimo server.