Changing the OSGi runtime

Geronimo comes with both Equinox and Felix pre-installed. You can easily switch the OSGi runtime between them. By default, Geronimo server uses Apache Felix as its OSGi runtime. Follow the instructions below to switch to Equinox.

Prerequisites

Make sure that Equinox bundle is already in the server repository. Generally it is located in a directory named repository/org/eclipse/osgi/3.5.1.v20090827/osgi-3.5.1.v20090827.jar under Geronimo_Home directory. Otherwise, you must install the bundle first. See Apache Felix on how to install a bundle in Felix.

Steps

1. Install the Equinox bundle if you don't have it pre-installed.
2. Open config.properties file under Geronimo_Home/etc directory, which is the initial configuration parameters to start up a Karaf framework.
3. Uncomment the line with karaf.framework=felix and comment out the line with karaf.framework=equinox.
4. Specify the location of Equinox bundle using the key karaf.framework.equinox. The following code snippet is an updated config.properteis file.
   config.properties

   ...
   #
   # Framework selection properties
   #
   # karaf.framework=felix
     karaf.framework=equinox
   
   karaf.framework.equinox=repository/org/eclipse/osgi/3.5.1.v20090827/osgi-3.5.1.v20090827.jar
   ...
   

5. Save the file and restart the server.

See Apache karaf for more information about those key=value pairs in the config.properties file.