Update RE: MacOS X Server, managing JBoss4

Hello MAGNet and JNet folks,
Just in case anyone is interested in running JBoss 4.0 on Mac OS X
Server, we have found a way to run this newer version of JBoss, rather
than JBoss 3.2.3 and Tomcat 4.1.29, which ships with Macintosh OS X Server.

We found that the Admin Server tool, which is used to start, stop, and
configure the JBoss Application Server, could not be configured to use a
different version of JBoss. However, outside the tool it is possible to
run another version of JBoss via the command line. But starting the
application server via the command line requires logging on to the
server and staying logged on. Also, with a server that might need
restart, we wanted to ensure that the application server could easily be
restarted when the computer was rebooted, without having to remotely
connect and start the server from the command line.

Using StartupItems seemed like an approach to auto-launching the
application server, and this works fine for Macintosh 10.3.8, but with
JBoss on OS X Server, it simply did not work. Turns out that instead of
asking about "StartupItems" in an earlier post, I should have been
inquiring about "Bootstrap Daemons".

On the Apple developer site I found an article last updated August 2003.
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/Concepts/BootProcess.html

Following that article, what worked:

In the directory /etc/mach_init.d, I put an XML file (JBossServer.plist)
with three key/string parameters:
the ServiceName key (I chose org.jboss.JBossServer for its string
parameter); the Command key, for which the string parameter is the full
path to run.sh (/Library/JBoss/jboss-4.0.0RC1/bin/run.sh);
and the boolean OnDemand key. This defaults to true, but it needed to be
set to false for JBoss to launch on startup.

I copied one of the existing {someservice}.plist files in the
mach_init.d directory to get the XML formatting for entering these
values. (This was suggested in an article recommended by Aron Roberts,
and it made it easier to get permissions right and the file in the
correct format.)

So far this has only been tested on our test Mac running OS X Server,
but it has worked with several restarts over several weeks. We will next
set up our staging and production servers, and then be looking at other
JBoss configuration issues.

Needless to say, if anyone else is working with these issues, has a
JBoss/Mac OS X Server environment, we'd be interested in hearing from
you. It looks as though this setup will work well, but we haven't found
many others using this particular combination of open source software on
the Macintosh OS X Server platform.

Thanks to the list for all the previous pointers and help with these issues,

Carol

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