Install jboss as daemon (autostart at boot)

[CuBone]

Introduction

This guide will let you run jboss as a daemon, that means you'll have a jboss instance that starts a computer boot. When you download jboss you get some example init scripts for different distributions but none for ubuntu. I did however get it to work with minor changes to the red hat init script. This is how I did it, there might be some better way and if you find better solutions than the ones in this guide please let me now and I'll post them here.

At the end of this tutorial you will have (if everything goes as planned) a jboss instance running that starts at computer boot with the help of a daemon script in /etc/init.d/. To keep things tidy jboss will have a separate user called jboss as process owner.

Ubuntu versions tested

Ubuntu 7.10 32 bit Server Version
Ubuntu 7.10 32 bit Desktop Version

Step 1: Install suns jdk

There have been problems reported with jboss and java 6 in the past. I don't know if there still is compatibility issues but to be safe I use java 5.

sudo apt-get install sun-java5-jdk

Step 2: create the jboss user

The reason to use a separate user account for jboss is to control the permissions of the jboss instance. You don't want jboss running as root with unlimited access to the whole system. There is no password created for the jboss user, and you probably don't need one either (unless you actually want to login as the jboss user).

sudo mkdir /home/jboss
sudo useradd -s /bin/bash -d /home/jboss jboss
sudo chown jboss:jboss /home/jboss/

Step 3: Download jboss

Go to http://labs.jboss.com/jbossas/downloads/ and get the latest stable version of jboss (4.2.2.GA when this guide was written). Download it to your home directory.
Now you have a file in ~/jboss-4.2.2.GA.zip

I used unzip to extract the archive, to install it run

sudo apt-get install unzip

but feel free to extract it with what ever program you feel fit.

sidenote:
When I installed jboss on my server I installed it in the /opt/folder instead of /home/jboss/. Where ever you decide to put jboss make sure the jboss user has read and write permission to the jboss folder and it's subfiles/-folders.

Move it to jboss home and extract it. To make a future upgrade of jboss a little easier a symlinc to jboss home is created. When you decide to upgrade jboss you'll just have to edit the symlinc to point to the new version.

cd ~
sudo mv jboss-4.2.2.GA.zip /home/jboss/jboss-4.2.2.GA.zip
sudo chown jboss:jboss /home/jboss/jboss-4.2.2.GA.zip
sudo su jboss
cd ~
unzip jboss-4.2.2.GA.zip
ln -s jboss-4.2.2.GA jboss
exit

Step 5:Get the init scriptt

All the changes to the red hat init script is in the setup section in the beginning of the script. If you followed my guide to the letter you can download my version of the script thats attached to this post. If you installed java or jboss in other directories it's probably easier to edit the script your self.

Option 1: download my script

Download the scriptattached to this post to your home folder then run this to move it to the correct folder.

sudo mv ~/jboss/jboss_init.sh /etc/init.d/jboss

End option 1

Option 2: edit the original red hat script yourself.

Copy the red hat init script to the init.d directory and rename it.

sudo cp /home/jboss/jboss/bin/jboss_init_redhat.sh /etc/init.d/jboss

This is all the changes I made to the scipt, nothing fancy, just som variables for jboss that needs to be set correct.

#define where jboss is - this is the directory containing directories log, bin, conf etc

JBOSS_HOME=${JBOSS_HOME:-"/home/jboss/jboss"}

#define the user under which jboss will run, or use 'RUNASIS' to run as the current user

JBOSS_USER=${JBOSS_USER:-"jboss"}

#make sure java is in your path

JAVAPTH=${JAVAPTH:-"/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun"}

#configuration to use, usually one of 'minimal', 'default', 'all'

JBOSS_CONF=${JBOSS_CONF:-"default"}

#the host where jboss should answer. o.o.o.o means answer all calls. set this to yourhost.com

JBOSS_HOST=${JBOSS_HOST:-"0.0.0.0"}

# Uncomment this line to store the console output, otherwise it's sent to /dev/null
 (good for debugging)
# JBOSS_CONSOLE=${JBOSS_CONSOLE:-"$JBOSS_HOME/server/$JBOSS_CONF/log/console.log"}

End option 2

Step 6: Install the init script

Make your script owned by root and executable.
Create run level shortcuts for the script.

sudo chown root:root /etc/init.d/jboss
sudo chmod ug+x /etc/init.d/jboss
sudo update-rc.d jboss defaults

To start jboss you type

sudo /etc/init.d/jboss start

If everything has gone as planned you should now have a functional installation of jboss that will start itself on computer boot.

Step 7: Redirecting traffic from port 80 to jboss port 8080 (Optional)

The default port for jboss is 8080 but the standard port for http traffic is 80. Port 80 is however a restricted port and can only be bound by root. To get around this little pickle you can redirect the incoming traffic on port 80 to 8080, the same goes for the https traffic on port 443 to jboss 8443. Here's a way to do that.

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 8080 
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p udp -m udp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 8080 
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 8443 
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p udp -m udp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 8443

This forward script was originally found here, http://www.2nrds.com/port-forwarding-in-linux

Remove
If you found a better way to do this or if you just don't want this installed anymore here's what you do.

Warning! All files will be removed from your sytem.

Remove the init daemon script

sudo /etc/init.d/jboss stop
sudo update-rc.d jboss remove
sudo rm /etc/init.d/jboss

Remove jboss files and user

sudo userdel jboss
sudo rm -r /home/jboss

Remove java

sudo apt-get remove sun-java5-jdk

Remove unzip

sudo apt-get remove unzip

End

That's all for me. This is my first ubuntu guide and my knowledge about linux is a bit limited. So if you think I made some bad decisions in this setup please let me know and we can make this guide better together.