THIS IS A TEST INSTANCE. ALL YOUR CHANGES WILL BE LOST!!!!
Article donated by: Hernan Cunico
This article is an attempt to cover as many administrative tasks as possible, common and not so common tasks. This article is grouped in four main sections having a similar flow to what you would find while using the Geronimo Administration Console, this way should be easier for you to familiarize on both tasks and console.
This article is organized in the following sections:
- #Administering the Apache Geronimo Server
- #Configuring Services
- #Administering applications
- Administering security
- Adding security realms
- Importing certificates
- Configuring LDAP
Additional reference:
Administering the Apache Geronimo Server
Covered in this section are the most common, every day, server related administrative tasks you may deal with. Subsequent sections will focus on configuring services, managing applications and configuring security.
Changing the Web container (Jetty or Tomcat)
When you download and build Apache Geronimo from source code (from svn) you would get a directory structure similar to this one:
- applications
- assemblies
- configs
- docs_nopublish
- etc
- modules
- openejb
- plugins
- sandbox
- xdocs
If you look under the assemblies directory you will find the following subdirectories:
- j2ee-installer
- j2ee-jetty-server
- j2ee-tomcat-server
We will focus on the last two directories that, as you may expect, contain self-contained images of Apache Geronimo configured to use either of these two Web containers.
Depending on whether you want to use Jetty or Tomcat you will change to the respective directory (j2ee-jetty-server or j2ee-tomcat-server), the internal subdirectory structure will be the same. Once in the Web container specific directory, change directory once again to target/geronimo-1.0. This directory is your self-contained, totally complete, Apache Geronimo server. You may copy this directory to a different location. This directory is being referenced as <geronimo_home> throughout these series of articles.
So, selecting the Web container is no longer a matter of changing configuration files but rather choosing a directory structure for the different assemblies. Within this structure you will find a /bin directory, the next section explains the commands located in this directory and how to start and stop the server.
Starting and stopping the server
There are two command line ways to start the server. From a command line window or terminal change directory to <geronimo_home>/bin. From there you can either type:
java -jar server.jar
or simply
startup
Refer to the Startup and Geronimo sections for all the options for this command.
To stop the server you will have to open a new command line window or terminal, change directory to <geronimo_home>/bin and run the shutdown command. You will be prompted for username and password. Refer to the Shutdown and Geronimo sections for the available options for this command.
If the server is already running you have the option of using the Geronimo Administration Console to shutdown the server remotely. With the server up and running open a Web browser and point to the following URL to access the console:
Log in to the Geronimo Administration Console and click on 
Shutdown on the Console Navigation menul on the left.
When you click on the Shutdown button in the Server Manager portlet, you will be prompted one more time to confirm the server shutdown. Click OK to confirm and shutdown the server. No need to mention that the connection from the Administration Console will be lost and you will need to restart the server from a terminal or command line window.
Configure log level
As explained in the Geronimo Administration Console section, the Administration Console provides four portlets for configuring and viewing the server's logs, these portlets are the Log Manager, Server Log Viewer, Derby Log Viewer and Web Access Log Viewer.
Log Manager
The Log Manager portlet options are illustrated in the following figure. From this portlet you can specify the location of the log configuration file. By default this value is set to var/log/server-log4j.properties.
Other value you can modify in from this portlet is the Refresh Period. This value tells Geronimo how often (in seconds) it should check for any changes to the configuration file. By default this value is set to 60 seconds.
From this portlet you can also change the Log Level. By default this value is set to INFO, the possible values you can choose from are All, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL, TRACE and OFF.
Server Log Viewer
The Server Log Viewer portlet options are illustrated in the following figure. From this portlet you can view the Geronimo server logs as well as set filters for refining the results displayed.
The Refresh link on the upper left corner will reset any filtering criteria you may have specified to the Geronimo Administration Console's defaults and will display the last 10 lines (if any) of the current Geronimo server log.
The Filter Results: area will let you specify different filtering criteria to further narrowing down your search. The File pull-down menu allows you to select the log file to view. The logs listed in this pull-down menu are ruled by the Configuration File (server-log4j.properties by default) specified in the #Log Manager portlet. The number of log files to choose from the File pull-down menu will depend on the number of log files defined in the server-log4j.properties configuration file.
Lines ..to.. lets you specify a range of line of log to analyze. Max Results limits the number of lines to be displayed. Level displays only those errors occurred for that Log Level. Containing text lets you enter a specific string to search through the server log. With Exceptions by clicking this checkbox will be displayed not just the error but also the exception, the stack trace display will be limited to the number lines set by the Max Results value.
Derby Log Viewer
The Derby Log viewer portlet options are illustrated in the following figure. From this portlet you can view the Derby server logs as well as set filters for refining the results displayed.
The Refresh link on the upper left corner will reset any filtering criteria you may have specified to the Geronimo Administration Console's defaults and will display the last 10 lines (if any) of the current Derby server log.
Similar to the #Server Log Viewer portlet, the Filter Results: area will let you specify different filtering criteria to further narrowing down your search. Lines ..to.. lets you specify a range of line of log to analyze. Max Results limits the number of lines to be displayed and Containing text lets you enter a specific string to search through the server log.
Web Access Log Viewer
The Web Access Log Viewer portlet options are illustrated in the following figure. From this portlet you can view the Web server logs as well as set filters for refining the results displayed.
The Refresh link on the upper left corner will reset any filtering criteria you may have specified to the Geronimo Administration Console's defaults. In contrast with the other portlets, the Web Access Log Viewer will display all the lines in the log, it will just be limited by your Web browser display capabilities.
The Filter Results: area will let you specify different filtering criteria to further narrowing down your search. For the Web Access Log Viewer this area is divided in three main groups, Date, Identity and Requests.
- Date:
Lets you specify a date range. If the Ignore Dates checkbox is selected, filtering will not be done using the date. All log lines that match the other filtering criteria will be displayed regardless of the date.
- Identity:
Lets you specify Remote Address (i.e. 192.168.0.1) and Authenticated User (i.e. system).
- Request:
Lets you specify the Request Method from and the Requested URI. You can select the Requested Method from a drop-down menu, the possible values are ANY, POST and GET. To filter by Requested URI just enter a URI, for example http://localhost:8080/console/login.jsp
.
Performance monitoring
For monitoring the Web server performance the Web Server Manager portlet is available by selecting Web Server on the Console Navigation menu on the left hand side. By default this portlet is not enabled, click on the enable button to start collecting statistics.
Once enable you will start collecting information on the number of requests, concurrent connections, requests duration, etc. The following figure illustrates all the values being collected.
The three links at the bottom let you refresh the current statistics, disable the portlet and stopping the collection of new data and reset the data collected.
Note that any request from you via the Geronimo Administration Console (for example refreshing statistics) will be also reflected in this data collection.
Adding new listeners for the Web containers
For configuring new listeners (HTTP, HTTPS and AJP) to the Web container in use (either Jetty or Tomcat) the Network Listener portlet is available by selecting Web Server on the Console Navigation menu on the left hand side. From this portlet you can add new listeners as well as change the status (stop, start, delete) of the existing connectors.
The processes described next are the same for both Jetty and Tomcat Web containers.
Add new HTTP listener
To add a new HTTP listener click on the respective link. The following figure illustrates the different parameters needed for creating a new HTTP listener. This process is very simple and the parameters are self explanatory, fill in with your values and click on Save.
Add new HTTPS listener
To add a new HTTPs listener click on the respective link. The following figure illustrates the different parameters needed for creating a new HTTPs listener. This process is very simple and the parameters are self explanatory, fill in with your values and click on Save.
Add new AJP listener
To add a new AJP listener click on the respective link. The following figure illustrates the different parameters needed for creating a new AJP listener. This process is very simple and the parameters are self explanatory, fill in with your values and click on Save.
Configuring the JMS server
For configuring the JMS Server, the JMS Network Listeners portlet is available by selecting JMS Server on the Console Navigation menu on the left hand side. When clicking on JMS Server you will be also presented with the JMS Server Manager portlet that displays the JMS brokers available in the server and theis status. The following figures illustrate these two portlets and options.
From the JMS Network Listeners portlet you can add new listeners as well as change the status (stop, start, delete) of the existing ones. The available options for adding connectors to ActiveMQ are already shown in the figure.
To add a new connector to ActiveMQ click on the appropriate link. The following figure illustrates the different parameters needed for creating these connectors. This process is very simple and the parameters are self explanatory, fill in with your values and click on Save.
Note that the same options will be presented independently of which listener you want to add.
Details on how to configure connection factories, queues, topics and destinations are covered in the next section #Configuring JMS.
Configuring Services
There are three majors tasks covered in this section, this tasks are:
- Adding artifacts to the Geronimo repository
- Configuring database pools
- Configuring JMS
Adding artifacts to the Geronimo repository
For adding artifacts to the repository the Repository Viewer portlet is available by selecting Common Libraries on the Console Navigation menu on the left hand side. The Repository Viewer portlet illustrated in the following figure displays the artifacts installed in the server's repository. The layout of the repository is the same as that used by Apache Maven making it possible to easily copy files The over.
To use an artifact in an application, add a dependency element into it's deployment plan. For example, to use Castor XML add the following XML to the plan:
<dependency> <uri>castor/jars/castor-0.9.5.3.jar</uri> </dependency>
Configuring database pools
To configure database pools, the Database Pools portlet is available by selecting Database Pools on the Console Navigation menu on the left hand side. The Database Pools portlet illustrated in the following figure shows all the available database pools and provides wizards for importing or creating new pools.
Create new database pools
You can create new pools by clicking on the Using the Geronimo database pool wizard link on the Database Pools portlet. This wizard will guide you through a four easy steps procedure.
Refer to Configuring DB2 Datasource for an additional working example on datasources with multiple jar (driver+license) files.
First you need to specify the name of the database pool and the database type.
Then you select the JDBC drivers which, by default, it has been pre-filled based on the database type you selected in the previous step. You also have to select the driver JAR from the pull-down menu and then specify the database name. For this example a test database was previously created, this is a single step procedure and it is explained in #Create a database.
The following step lets you configure some connection parameters such as pool size (min and max) and timeouts. Once you are satisfied with the paramenters click on Test Connetion.
When you successfully tested the connection, click on Deploy Pool. Alternatively you can click on Show Deployment Plan, this option shows you the deployment plan for this database pool and lets you edit it. Additional instructions on how to manually deploy a DB plan may be found in the Configuring DB2 Datasource section.
Once deployed, Derby_Test should be listed along with all the other database pools.
Import database pools from JBoss 4
This wizard will assist you in importing existing JBoss 4 database pools. For this particular example we will use the hsqldb-ds.xml provided by the default JBoss server, that is <jboss_home>\server*default*\deploy\hsqldb-ds.xml and Hypersonic database.
Before we continue you will have to provide Geronimo with the driver jar for Hypersonic HSQL. To do that you will have to follow similar steps as described in Configuring DB2 Datasource. Here is the steps summary for declaring the HSQL driver jar in Geronimo.
- Create an entry in the Geronimo repository to identify the drivers for Hipersonic. For this example we created <geronimo_home>\repository\ org.hsqldb.Server\jars. Note we created two directories.
- Locate the HSQL driver jar
hsqldb.jar. This file is located in the <jboss_home>\server\default\lib directory. Make a copy of this file and rename it tohsqldb-1.8.0.jar. - Copy the renamed file to the repository entry you created before, <geronimo_home>\repository\org.hsqldb.Server\jars. Failing to rename the file before copying it into the repository will cause Geronimo to throw an exception because can not read the file name format. The driver file name has to be versioned.
Go back to the Geronimo Administration Console and click on the Database Pools link. From the Database Pools portlet click on Import from JBoss 4. In the Step 1 of Importing the Database Pools specify the location of the -ds.xml file and click Next.
Once the JBoss specific datasource is loaded, Step 2 lists the database pools the wizard was able to recognize from the hsqldb-ds.xml file. Click on Confirm and Deploy.
The following step allows you to edit the recognized database pool. In this step you will have to specify the driver jar you declared when updating the Geronimo repository. See how Driver JAR: is listed in the following figure.
Click on Test Connection to verify you entered all the necessary data and Geronimo can establish a connection.
Click on Deploy, this will take you to the same page you saw in Step 2. If you would have more pools defined in the file you could repeat these steps and selectively import some of the database pools. Since we only have one in this example you may click on Finish to complete the import wizard.
You should now see the imported DefaultDS database pool.
Import database pools from WebLogic 8.1
This wizard offers two different alternatives for importing existing BEA WebLogic database pools. The first one is by providing a configuration file (i.e. config.xml). If you choose for this option the wizard will convert as many fields as it can and then will ask you to manually enter those it was not able to convert. For instance, one of the values you will have to provide is the database password.
The second alternative is feasible if you have both Apache Geronimo and BEA WebLogic servers installed on the same machine, in this alternative you can directly specify the WebLogic installation path and domain directories. This alternative has the advantage of being able to directly read the database passwords.
Independently of the alternative you may choose, you will still need to tell Geronimo where the database driver jars are. Here is the steps summary for declaring the PointBase driver jar in Geronimo.
- Create an entry in the Geronimo repository to identify the drivers for PointBase. For this example we created <geronimo_home>\repository\ com.pointbase\jars. Note we created two directories.
- Locate the PointBase client driver jar
pbclient44.jar. This file is located in the <bea_home>weblogic81\common\eval\pointbase\lib directory. Make a copy of this file and rename it topbclient-4.4.0.jar. - Copy the renamed file to the repository entry you created before, <geronimo_home>\repository\com.pointbase\jars. Failing to rename the file before copying it into the repository will cause Geronimo to throw an exception because can not read the file name format. The driver file name has to be versioned.
Go back to the Geronimo Administration Console and click on the Database Pools link. From the Database Pools portlet click on Import from WebLogic 8.1. The following figure illustrates the import wizard.
For this particular example we will focus in the second alternative. A default example domain was created in the WebLogic server with all the sample applications also included by default. This domain is located in the <bea_home>\user_projects\domains\examples directory.
In the first screen of the import wizard (illustrated in the above figure) enter the Domain directory path: and weblogic81/server/lib path: and click Next.
Domain directory path: <bea_home>\user_projects\domains\examples
weblogic81/server/lib path: <bea_home>\weblogic81\server\lib
The Step 2 illustrated in the following figure shows a list of recognized database pools from the WebLogic domain you specified that can be imported to Apache Geronimo.
Note that the WebLogic domain you are trying to import the database pool from must be running if you want to successfully test the connection. For this example click on the second Confirm and Deploy from the list, the one corresponding to examples-dataSource-demoPool.
In the following step select the Driver JAR: you just created in the Geronimo repository.
Note that the database password has been recognized. Click on Test Connection, you should see a confirmation similar to the following figure. Click on Deploy.
The following page goes back to the Step 2, this time it will display the remaining database pools available for import and will also show the import status of the database pool you just imported. At this point you can click on Skip Remaining Pools to leave the import wizard.
You should now see the database pool you just imported listed in the database pool portlet.
Removing database pools
To remove the database pools you can use the Deployer tool. Among other things, this tool allows you to list the available modules, the pool you just deployed will be listed as a module.
To list all the available modules type the following command:
E:\geronimo\bin>deploy --user system --password manager list-modules | grep user/database
+ user/database-pool-Derby_Test/1/car
For this command example grep was used for display purposes, the use of grep is optional.
Once you identified the database pool (in this example user/database-pool-Derby_Test/1/car) you may remove by typing the following command:
E:\geronimo\bin>deploy --user system --password manager undeploy user/database-pool-Derby_Test/1/car
Module user/database-pool-DerbyTest/1/car unloaded.
Module user/database-pool-DerbyTest/1/car uninstalled.
Undeployed user/database-pool-DerbyTest/1/car
As an additional step for verification the removal of the database pool you can run the following command, there should be no entries listed.
deploy --user system --password manager list-modules | grep Derby_Test
Create a database
To create a new embedded database in Geronimo the DB Manager portlet is available. Near the bottom of the Console Navigation menu navigate through Misc -> Embedded DB -> DB Manager. This portlet trigers the DB Viewer and Run SQL portlets illustrated in the following figures.
The DB Viewer portlet displays all the available databases, their tables (application and system) and displays the contents of the tables.
The RunSQL portlet allows you to run SQL commands to create or delete databases and to modify the content of the tables. This portlet provides pull-down menus for selecting the database to which you want to run the command against.
To create a test database specify test in the Create DB: field and click on Create. After a few seconds you should see a confirmation message near the bottom of the Run SQL portlet stating Database created: test. You should now see the test database entry in the DB Viewer portlet.
If you want to run any SQL command on this database make sure you select test from the Use DB: pull-down menu, enter the SQL command and then click on the Run SQL button. The results of the command will be displayed near the bottom of the protlet.
Configuring JMS
Connection factories, queues, topics and destinations.
To configure JMS, the JMS Connection Factories and JMS Destination Manager portlets are avaiable by selecting JMS on the Console Navigation menu on the left hand side. The JMS Connection Factories portlet illustrated in the following figure displays all the JMS connectors that are configured in Geronimo server and allows you to add a new JMS Connection Factory.
Further details on JMS integration are covered in the Integrating A Third Party JMS Provider section.
Administering applications
This section focuses on the available alternatives for managing applications. This section will show you how to perform these application management activities using the Geronimo Administration Console and the command line options. For the examples shown in this section we will be using the HelloWorld.war created in the Quick start - Apache Geronimo for the impatient section.
Installing and removing applications
To perform these activities you currently have three options available, these options are using:
- Geronimo Administration Console
- #Deploy tool (command line)
- #Hot deployment (command line)
When you package your application you may include the deployment plan within the package or not. At deployment time, Geronimo will look for the geronimo-web.xml and web.xml deployment plans in the WEB-INF directory within you packaged application. If Geronimo can not find those descriptors it will attempt to deploy the application using defaults. If using defaults fails you will have to provide a deployment plan either repackaged in the application or providing an external deployment plan, in the following sections we will discuss further these alternatives.
Geronimo Administration Console
To install a new application via the Geronimo Administration Console the Install New Applications portlet is available by selecting Deploy New on the Console Navigation menu on the left hand side. This portlet also allows you to start automatically the application right after it was deployed.
As mentioned before, for this example we will be using the simple JSP HelloWorld sample created in the Quick start - Apache Geronimo for the impatient section. This sample has already included in the package the deployment plans.
From the Install New Applications portlet click on Browse to specify the path to the HelloWorld.war in the Archive: section. Make sure the Start app after install checkbox is selected (by default is checked) and then click on Install.
You should see the " The application was successfully deployed. " confirmation message on the top of the portlet.
Another way to verify that the application has been successfully installed and started is by checking the Installed Web Applications portlet which is available by selecting Web App WARs on the Console Navigation menu on the left hand side. You should see the application listed as HelloWorld and with the status running.
Since the application we installed is HelloWold.WAR we use this portlet, when you install an EAR you would check the status using the Installed Application EARs portlet available by selecting Application EARs on the Console Navigation menu on the left hand side. The installation procedure is the same for both WAR and EAR applications.
To remove the applications through the Geronimo Administration Console you will use these last two portlets, either the Installed Web Applications or the Installed Application EARs portlets depending on the application to uninstall.
For our example access the Installed Web Applications portlet, and click on Uninstall for the Component Name Hello World. This will stop the application first and then uninstall it. The confirmation message " Uninstalled application " should be listed at the bottom of the portlet.
These are the basic steps for installing and uninstalling applications via de Geronimo Administration Console, the following two sections will focus on the command line options.