Dear all,
Today I committed a big update for the deployment refactoring branch.
I've added the following features:
- Moved Deployment interfaces and related components to the jetspeed-api
subproject,
as well as the ApplicationServerManager interface and its new Result
component.
This allows access to these services for portlet applications.
- Provided a new ManagerServlet somewhat like the ManagerServlet of Tomcat.
It allows remote control of portlet applications and the registry with the
following functions: start, stop, reload, list, undeploy and deploy (upload).
I also created a new JetspeedConsole CLI using the ManagerServlet which works
well, but which I haven't committed yet because I need to clean it up first.
- The ManagerServlet depends for several of its tasks on a
ApplicationServerManager
implementation. With the TomcatManager all of its features can now be used.
The implementations of the JBossManager and WeblogicManager are still empty
shells though and probably someone else with more knowledge of these
application servers should take a look at those.
- A new PortletApplicationManager portlet. Yes, another PAM indeed, and the
naming of these is getting confusing.
This new portlet though provides (almost) the same functionality as the
ManagerServlet.
Its lists all registered portlet applications in a table with action links
for:
start, stop, undeploy and delete (unregister from the registry).
It also shows if an portlet application actually is running or not.
Because I wanted to provide this functionality in table layout, I decided to
not
implement it in the already existing PAM (PortletApplicationBrowser) portlet
which
presents the portlet applications and its portlets in a tree.
For now, this portlet is accessible from the Administrative folder
(pam2.psml).
We probably need to discuss though if and/or how these two portlets should be
integrated.
This portlet also depends on a ApplicationServerManager. If none is
configured (like
for JBoss) it will still show if a portlet application is running or not and
allow
to delete (unregister) an portlet application.
- J2 on JBoss
Because one of the premises of this deployment refactoring was that it should
make
it easier to deploy J2 on other application servers as well, I decided to
prove this
and got my feet wet trying it out for JBoss (3.2.7).
With success!
I wrote a list of things to do to get this branch running on JBoss in a
comment to
JS2-210: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/JS2-210#action_60983
Once this branch is merged into the head branch I'll provide proper
instructions on
the website or wiki (although I'm not much of a wiki jockey yet).
I also tested with JBoss 4.0.1sp1 which looks to be working just as well. I
didn't
have time to test that one a lot though.
Of course, there were quite a few problems to solve, but *none* were related
to
(re)deployment. And many of the problems as indicated by the wiki pages for
JBoss
deployment of the M1 or current head version of J2 seems to be resolved :-)
The following issues are important though:
- commons-logging and Log4J dependencies
JBoss provides commons-logging and Log4J, as well as the Log4J
configuration from
a shared classloader to all the applications.
This really is conflicting with the way we use them in Jetspeed-2 under
Tomcat
(although Tomcat 5.5 also is giving more headaches with this now).
One simply cannot have the commons-logging and log4j jars anymore in
WEB-INF/lib
because it definitely is giving classloader problems under JBoss.
Furthermore, our own log4j configuration conflicts with the global
configuration
provided with JBoss. If you initialize a new log4j configuration from a web
application
like we do with J2, you end up closing and detaching existing loggers and
appenders
and rerouting them into the J2 logging. Likewise, if some other web
application
deployed after J2 does the same, the J2 logging might get closed and
detached and
rerouted into this other web application its logging.
Anyway you look at it, dynamic log4j configuration is very problematic
under JBoss.
And, while scanning the internet for a way around this, I found out many
others
encountered the same problem and not only on JBoss but other application
servers
as well.
After a long investigation of the concrete implementations of
commons-logging and
log4j though I've come up with a solution which I called
IsolatedLog4JLogger.
As I put a lot of javadoc into that class I'm not going to reproduce it
here.
But, I invite everyone to have a look at it. Its currently only committed
to the
deployment_refactoring branch under
portal/src/java/org/apache/jetspeed/util.
Whats left is a future solution of the packaging of these jars. Having to
remove
them after a war is build is quite dumb and easy to forget as well.
- JBoss UniversalClassLoader
I don't think I have to explain anyone interested in JBoss what this means.
Anyway, with a few tweaks to the JBoss configurations I managed to get it
working
"properly" ;-) Other solutions are also possible (like providing a
jboss-web.xml
in *all* portlet application war files).
- JAAS authentication
This was quite simple to implement but in the end turned out to be working
only
half way.
The authentication itself is easy to do by configuring our
DefaultLoginModule in
the JBoss login-config.xml.
But, the propagation of the Subject principals to JBoss is quite a problem.
Simply put: none is.
JBoss requires the Subject to be configured with a java.security.acl.Group
named
"Roles" containing all the "Role" principals. As our security principals
don't
implement java.securitry.acl.Group (yet) none is recognized by JBoss.
After some further investigation, it turns out other application servers
might require a Group implementation as well. So, we might need to refactor
our
security principals a bit to get this to work.
As we don't actually *use* request.isUserInRole(roleName) in our demo
portlets
yet (except for the security demo portlet), the default J2 deployment
actually
works quite good.
Well, I'd be very interested in others experiences with this branch (the latest
and
from before my last changes). I know some are trying it out on different
platforms as
well.
Seth Ford is still unsuccessful with getting M1 running on WebSpere. Seth, I
can't
really help you out with WebSphere but I really would suggest you try it out
with the
latest from this branch (check the JBoss deployment instructions as reference).
I think that with a few success stories of other deployments on different
platforms
of this branch it might be almost ready for merging with the head.
Deleting (unregistering) of portlet applications is now provided for, as well as
start, stop, (remote) deployment and undeployment for Tomcat.
If anyone has some requirements which should be fixed/implemented on this branch
before considering it ready for merge with the head (besides more proof it works
too on other platforms), please let me know. If possible and reasonable, I'll
try
to provide for it.
Regards, Ate
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