The most recent release of JBoss is available from the JBoss downloads page, http://www.jboss.org/products/jbossas/downloads. After you have downloaded the version you want to install, use the JDK jar tool (or any other ZIP extraction tool) to extract the jboss-4.0.4.zip archive contents into a location of your choice. It does not matter where on your system you install JBoss. Note, however, that installing JBoss into a directory that has a name that contains spaces causes problems in some situations with Sun-based VMs. This is caused by bugs with file URLs not correctly escaping the spaces in the resulting URL. The jboss-4.0.4.tgz archive is a gzipped tar file that requires a gnutar-compatible tar program that can handle the long pathnames in the archive. The default tar binaries on Solaris and OS X do not currently support the long pathnames.

JBoss also provides a GUI installer that can simplify the installation process. In addition to the basic installation, the installer allows you to select the which services are installed secure the JBoss management applications. Using a custom JBoss install created by the installer can greatly simplify the installation and configuration of JBoss.

The installer can be run directly from a web browser using Java Web Start or can be downloaded as an executable JAR file named jboss-4.0.4-installer.jar. On many operating system, you can run executable JARs by double-clicking them. If your system doesn't support that, you can run the installer directly from the command line:

[tmp]$ java -jar jboss-4.0.4-installer.jar

When you launch the installer, you will be able to select the starting server configuration set, as shown in Figure 1.1, “The JBoss AS installer configuration set selection screen”.

Figure 1.1. The JBoss AS installer configuration set selection screen

The starting configuration determine which sets of packages are available for installation. The following table describes each of the configuration sets.

After selecting the configuration set, you have the option to further customize the services installed, eliminating unneeded options. When choosing configuration sets, be aware that you can not add packages not in the configuration set. If you you wanted a simple web container (the tomcat configuration) that also had JMS support (the jms configuration), it would be necessary to go to a larger configuration, such as the default configuration, and remove the unwanted packages. Figure 1.2, “The JBoss installer package selection screen” shows the package selection screen.

Figure 1.2. The JBoss installer package selection screen

The following screen (Figure 1.3, “The JBoss installer configuration name screen”) allows for the customization of the server configuration name. Unless you need to create multiple configurations, you should use a configuration name of default. Use of any other configuration requires you to start JBoss with the -c option to specify the configuration JBoss should use.

Figure 1.3. The JBoss installer configuration name screen

The installer will then guide you through a few install customization screens. The first screen allows you to enable applications isolation, completely separating the classloading space of all applications. Application isolation can be helpful in some instances, but it comes with the cost of requiring slow pass-by-value semantics for passing data between applications. In most cases, it is preferable to use loader repositories to control the sharing of classes on an application-by-application basis rather than enabling isolation for the entire server.

When installed from the tar/zip archive, all JBoss services are left in a developer-friendly state requiring no authentication to access most JBoss services, including administrative services. The installer gives you a chance to secure those services on the security screen, shown in Figure 1.4, “The JBoss installer security configuration screen”. It is recommended that you click to enable security for all services and change the password from the default admin/admin values.

Figure 1.4. The JBoss installer security configuration screen

When you install from the installer, you get a smaller install image that is more tuned for your environment. However, the directory structure will be slightly different than when using the tar/zip archive. The examples in the book need to make use of many different configurations and will assume the complete install. Although use of the installer is recommended for normal JBoss use, you'll need to download the complete image to work through all the examples.

Installing the JBoss distribution creates a jboss-4.0.4 directory that contains server start scripts, JARs, server configuration sets and working directories. You need to know your way around the distribution layout to locate JARs for compiling code, updating configurations, deploying your code, etc. Figure 1.5, “The JBoss AS directroy structure” illustrates the installation directory of the JBoss server.

Figure 1.5. The JBoss AS directroy structure

Throughout this book we refer to the top-level jboss-4.0.4 directory as the JBOSS_DIST directory. In Figure 1.5, “The JBoss AS directroy structure”, the default server configuration file set is shown expanded. It contains a number of subdirectories: conf, data, deploy, lib, log, and tmp. In a clean installation, only the conf, deploy, and lib directories will exist. Several of the locations may be overridden. For these locations, the org.jboss.system.server.ServerConfig interface constant and its corresponding system property string are shown. The names ending in URL correspond to locations that can be specified using a URL to access remote locations, for example, HTTP URLs against a web server. Table 1.2, “The JBoss top-level directory structure” shows the the top-level directories and their function.

Table 1.3, “The JBoss server configuration directory structure” shows the the directories inside of the server configuration directory and their function.

The contents of the conf and deploy directories will be shown in the following section.

The JBOSS_DIST/server directory contains one or more configuration file sets. The default JBoss configuration file set is located in the JBOSS_DIST/server/default directory. JBoss allows you to add more than one configuration set so a server can easily be run using alternate configurations. Creating a new configuration file set typically starts with copying the default file set into a new directory name and then modifying the configuration files as desired. Figure 1.6, “An expanded view of the default server configuration file set conf and deploy directories” below shows the contents of the default configuration file set.

Figure 1.6. An expanded view of the default server configuration file set conf and deploy directories

The files in the conf directory are explained in the following section.

The following are the files in the deploy directory and their function.

The all configuration contains several addition services.

When installing EJB3 support, several additional EJB3 services are made available.

Finally, in the EJB3 all configuration adds two additional services to su

After you have installed the JBoss distribution, it is wise to perform a simple startup test to validate that there are no major problems with your Java VM/operating system combination. To test your installation, move to the bin directory and execute the run.bat or run.sh script, as appropriate for your operating system. Your output should look like the following and contain no error or exception messages:

[bin]$ sh run.sh

=========================================================================
            
JBoss Bootstrap Environment
            
JBOSS_HOME: /tmp/jboss-4.0.3
            
JAVA: /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Home//bin/java
            
JAVA_OPTS: -server -Xms128m -Xmx128m -Dprogram.name=run.sh
            
CLASSPATH: /tmp/jboss-4.0.3/bin/run.jar:/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Home
/lib/tools.jar
            
=========================================================================
            
15:19:42,557 INFO  [Server] Starting JBoss (MX MicroKernel)...
15:19:42,564 INFO  [Server] Release ID: JBoss 4.0.3RC2 (build: CVSTag=Branch_4_0 
date=200508131954)
15:19:42,570 INFO  [Server] Home URL: file:/private/tmp/jboss-4.0.3/
15:19:42,573 INFO  [Server] Library URL: file:/private/tmp/jboss-4.0.3/lib/
15:19:42,604 INFO  [Server] Patch URL: null
15:19:42,608 INFO  [Server] Server Name: default
15:19:42,627 INFO  [Server] Server Home Dir: /private/tmp/jboss-4.0.3/server/default
15:19:42,629 INFO  [Server] Server Home URL: file:/private/tmp/jboss-4.0.3/server/default/
15:19:42,634 INFO  [Server] Server Data Dir: /private/tmp/jboss-4.0.3/server/default/data
15:19:42,636 INFO  [Server] Server Temp Dir: /private/tmp/jboss-4.0.3/server/default/tmp
15:19:42,638 INFO  [Server] Server Config URL: 
file:/private/tmp/jboss-4.0.3/server/default/conf/
15:19:42,640 INFO  [Server] Server Library URL: 
file:/private/tmp/jboss-4.0.3/server/default/lib/
15:19:42,642 INFO  [Server] Root Deployment Filename: jboss-service.xml
15:19:42,657 INFO  [Server] Starting General Purpose Architecture (GPA)...
15:19:43,960 INFO  [ServerInfo] Java version: 1.4.2_05,Apple Computer, Inc.
15:19:43,963 INFO  [ServerInfo] Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM 1.4.2-38,"Apple 
Computer, Inc."
15:19:43,970 INFO  [ServerInfo] OS-System: Mac OS X 10.3.8,ppc
15:19:45,243 INFO  [Server] Core system initialized
...
15:20:42,584 INFO  [Server] JBoss (MX MicroKernel) [4.0.3RC2 (build: CVSTag=Branch_4_0 
date=200508131954)] Started in 58s:659ms

If your output is similar to this (accounting for installation directory differences), you are now be ready to use JBoss.

Using run.sh without any arguments starts the server using the default server configuration file set. To start with an alternate configuration file set, you pass in the name of the directory under JBOSS_DIST/server that you want to use as the value to the -c command line option. For example, to start with the minimal configuration file set you would specify:

[bin]$ ./run.sh -c minimal
...
15:02:02,939 INFO  [Server] JBoss (MX MicroKernel) [4.0.3RC2 (build: CVSTag=Branch_4_0 
date=200508311658)] Started in 6s:809ms

The run script supports the following options:

usage: run.sh [options]
    -h, --help                    Show this help message
    -V, --version                 Show version information
    --                            Stop processing options
    -D<name>[=<value>]            Set a system property
    -d, --bootdir=<dir>           Set the boot patch directory; Must be absolute or url
    -p, --patchdir=<dir>          Set the patch directory; Must be absolute or url
    -n, --netboot=<url>           Boot from net with the given url as base
    -c, --configuration=<name>    Set the server configuration name
    -B, --bootlib=<filename>      Add an extra library to the front bootclasspath
    -L, --library=<filename>      Add an extra library to the loaders classpath
    -C, --classpath=<url>         Add an extra url to the loaders classpath
    -P, --properties=<url>        Load system properties from the given url
    -b, --host=<host or ip>       Bind address for all JBoss services
    -g, --partition=<name>        HA Partition name (default=DefaultDomain)
    -u, --udp=<ip>                UDP multicast address
    -l, --log=<log4j|jdk>         Specify the logger plugin type