Installing the JBoss Application Server -CodeIdol

Installing the JBoss Application Server

Before going any further, make sure you have the Java SE JDK 5 or higher installed and correctly configured.

To download the JBoss binaries, go to the JBoss web site at http://www.jboss.com/products/jbossas/downloads. You should be able to start the installation process directly from this page by clicking the Run Installer link. The first few screens of the installer are self-explanatory. They ask for a license acceptance as well as the installation directory. When you get to the Installation Type screen, make sure that you choose the EJB 3.0 installation option, as shown in Figure W-1.

Figure W-1. Installation Type screen

The next screen allows you to choose what packages you want to have installed. For now, click Next and use the default settings. After the Packages screen, you will land on the Configuration Name screen shown in Figure W-2. Make sure you use the default value provided here because all of the workbook examples rely on this relative directory structure.

When the installation completes, you can launch JBoss by executing the run script in the $JBOSS_HOME/bin directory:

Unix:$ run.sh

Windows:C:\jboss-4.0.x\bin>run.bat

That's it! You now have a fully working JBoss server!

Figure W-2. Configuration Name screen

Discovering the JBoss Directory Structure

Installing JBoss creates the directory structure shown in Figure W-3.

Figure W-3. JBoss directory structure

Table W-1 describes the purposes of the various directories.

Table W-1. JBoss directories
Directory	Description
bin	Scripts to start up and shut down JBoss.
client	Client-side Java libraries (JARs) required to communicate with JBoss.
docs	Sample configuration files (for database configuration, etc.).
docs/dtd	Document Type Definitions (DTDs) for the various XML files used in JBoss.
lib	JARs loaded at startup by JBoss and shared by all JBoss configurations. (You won't put your own libraries here.)
server	Various JBoss configurations. (Each configuration must be in a different subdirectory. The name of the subdirectory represents the name of the configuration. The configuration name will be what you picked in the Configuration Screen when installing JBoss in Figure W-2.)
server/default	JBoss' default configuration; used when no configuration name is specified on the JBoss command line.
server/default/conf	JBoss' configuration files. (You will learn more about the content of this directory in the next section.)
server/default/data	JBoss' database files (embedded database or JBossMQ, for example).
server/default/deploy	JBoss' hot-deployment directory. (Any file or directory dropped in this directory is automatically deployed in JBoss: EJBs, WARs, EARs, and even services.)
server/default/lib	JARs that JBoss loads at startup when starting this particular configuration.
server/default/log	JBoss' logfiles.
server/default/tmp	JBoss' temporary files.

If you want to define your own configuration, you can rerun the installer and choose a different configuration name when you get to the screen shown in Figure W-2. To start JBoss with a given configuration, use the -c parameter on the command line:

Windows:C:\jboss-

4.0.x

\bin> run.bat -c config-name

Unix:$ ./run.sh -c config-name

A run script with no parameters defaults to a configuration installed in the server/default directory.

JBoss Configuration Files

As the previous section described, JBoss' server directory can contain any number of directories, each representing a different JBoss configuration.

The server/default/conf directory contains JBoss' configuration files. The purpose of the various files is discussed in Table W-2.

Table W-2. JBoss configuration files
File	Description
jacorb.properties	JBoss IIOP configuration.
jbossmq-state.xml	JBossMQ (JMS implementation) user configuration.
jboss-service.xml	Definition of JBoss' services launched at startup (class loaders, JNDI, deployers, etc.).
log4j.xml	Log4J logging configuration.
login-config.xml	JBoss security configuration (JBossSX).

Deployment in JBoss

The deployment process in JBoss is straightforward. In each configuration, JBoss constantly scans a specific directory, $JBOSS_HOME/server/default/deploy, for changes. This directory is generally referred to informally as the deploy directory.

You can copy the following to this directory:

Any JAR library (the classes it contains are automatically added to the JBoss classpath)
An EJB-JAR
A Web Application aRchive (WAR)
An Enterprise Application aRchive (EAR)
An XML file containing JBoss MBean definitions
A directory ending in .jar, .war, or .ear and containing the extracted content of an EJB-JAR, a WAR, or an EAR, respectively.

To redeploy any of these files (JAR, WAR, EAR, XML, etc.), simply overwrite it with a more recent version. JBoss will detect the change by comparing the files' timestamps, undeploy the previous files, and deploy their replacements. To redeploy a directory, update its modification timestamp by using a command-line utility such as touch. To undeploy a file, simply remove it from the deploy directory.

Dec. 26, 2007, 5:41 p.m.posted by hashspark

Installing the JBoss Application Server