The Apache Felix Web Console is a simple tool to inspect and manage OSGi framework instances using your favourite Web Browser.

Requirements

The Web Console only has a single required dependency on the framework: A running implementation of the OSGi Http Service Specification. The reason for this is, that the Web Console is implemented as a servlet (actually just a gateway servlet dispatching to Web Console plugins) which is registered with the Http Service. If your framework does not yet have a Http Service installed, you might select from a variety of such implementations. The following is just an incomplete list:

Apache Felix HTTP Service. This is a very basic implementation of the OSGi Http Service based on Jetty 6.1.7. The Apache Felix HTTP Service has not been released yet, so you would have to build it yourself.
PAX Web Service. The PAX Web Service is the basis for a whole range of additions from the OPS4J project. The PAX Web Service is also based on Jetty 6 and may be dowloaded from the OPS4J PAX Web page.
Equinox HTTP Service implementation. You can get more information on the Equinox implementation from the Server-Side Equinox page.

Apart from that Web Console has the following dependencies, which do not need to be satisfied. In this case the respective functionality is just missing.

OSGi Log Service – The Log Service is used for logging. If the service is not available the Web Console prints logging to the standard output
OSGi Configuration Admin Service and OSGi Metatype Service – The Configuration Admin and Metatype services are used to support simple form based configuration administration
Apache Felix Declarative Services – If your framework uses the Apache Felix Declarative Services implementation, you can use to the Web Console to inspect the declared components available from the various bundles and managed by the Service Component Runtime.

Note, that the Apache Felix Declarative Services implementation is the only Apache Felix dependency contained in the Web Console. If you do not use the Apache Felix Declarative Services implementation, you just cannot inspect the declared components (because there is no official public API for this). Otherwise the Web Console perfectly operates without any problems.

Installation

To install just use your favourite current means of installing new bundles in to the OSGi framework. For example using the Apache Felix shell console you might do:

> install http://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/apache/dist/felix/org.apache.felix.webconsole-1.0.0.jar
bundle x
> start x

where x is the bundle number printed by the Shell Console indicating the Bundle ID of the Web Console bundle.

Configuration

The configuration of the Web Console consists of two parts: One part is the configuration of the Http Service defining at which host address (host and port number) the servlet container is accessible. This configuration is technically outside of the scope of the Web Console configuration. See below for more information and how this is influenced.

The second part of the Web Console configuration is the configuration of the console itself. The Web Console is configured using the OSGi Configuration Admin Service in that the Web Console registered a ManagedService with Service PID org.apache.felix.webconsole.internal.servlet.OsgiManager (of course you may well use the Web Console to edit the configuration of the Web Console itself).

The Web Console supports the following settings with their corresponding default values:

Property	Default Value	Description
`realm`	`OSGi Management Console`	The name of the HTTP Authentication Realm.
`username`	`admin`	The name of the user allowed to access the OSGi Management Console. To disable authentication clear this value.
`password`	`admin`	The password for the user allowed to access the OSGi Management Console.
`manager.root`	`/system/console`	The root path to the OSGi Management Console.
`default.render`	`bundles`	The name of the default configuration page when invoking the OSGi Management console.

The default values apply if the respective property is missing from the configuration or if no configuration is provided at all.

Security

The Web Console only has very basic security at the moment supporting only HTTP Basic authentication. This security is enabled by default and may be disabled by simply clearing the username property.

To enhance the security of the Web Console you strongly encouraged to change at least the password for the admin user.

Browser Compliance

The goal of the Web Console is to support as big a range of Web Browsers as possible. As it stands now, Firefox (versions 2 and 3), Opera and Internet Explorer (versions 6 and 7) seem to be capable of using the Web Console. Should you encounter any problems with your particular browser, please report an issue for the Web Console in our issue tracking system (JIRA).

Issues

Should you have any questions using the Web Console, please send a note to one of our Mailing Lists.

Please report any issues with the Web Console in our issue tracking system (JIRA) and be sure to report for the Web Console component. See our Issue Tracking page for more details.