Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Administration I

There are four main methods to install JBoss EAP 7:

The JBoss EAP installation directory is referred throughout this book as JBOSS_HOME. This is also the name of an OS environment variable used by the JBoss EAP startup scripts and other utility scripts to find its installation directory and also find configuration files, log files, and others.

To install JBoss EAP, use one of the following commands:

The following screen capture shows the JBoss EAP installer in GUI mode:

Figure 1.5: The JBoss EAP 7 GUI Installer

If no GUI access is available on a machine and it can only be accessed via a terminal, then you can execute the JBoss EAP Installer from a console. Both the graphical installer and the text console based installer follow the same set of steps. To launch the installer in console mode, run :

# java -jar jboss-eap-7.4.0-installer.jar -console
Select language :
0: eng
1: chn
2: deu
3: fra
4: jpn
5: por
6: spa
Please choose [0] :
END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
JBOSS(r) ENTERPRISE MIDDLEWARE(tm)
...
press 1 to continue, 2 to quit, 3 to redisplay
1
Select the installation path:  [/opt/jboss-eap-7.4]

Whether using the GUI or the console, the EAP installer creates an XML document that saves all settings. This XML document can be saved to repeat an installation without any human interaction:

$ java -jar jboss-eap-7.4.0-installer.jar myinstall.xml

Replace myinstall.xml with the appropriate name of your auto-install XML file. This command does not require any human input, allowing you to install a custom JBoss EAP 7 instance using scripting.

Red Hat provides cumulative patches for minor version updates. For example, you can upgrade from JBoss EAP 7.4.0 to 7.4.11. You can download the cumulative patches from the Red Hat Customer Portal. The patches can be applied from the Management Console, or from the JBoss CLI tool. For example, this command applies a patch on a stopped JBoss EAP instance.

[user@host jboss-eap-7.4]$ bin/jboss-cli.sh --command="patch apply /tmp/jboss-eap-7.4.11-patch.zip

The JBoss CLI tool is explained elsewhere in this course.

You can also patch and upgrade a JBoss EAP installation from a major version to another. For example, you can upgrade from JBoss EAP 6.4 to 7.0, or from 7.3 to 7.4. The major upgrade is different depending on the installation method that you use. A major upgrade involves reinstalling the JBoss EAP binaries, configuring the new version to be the same as the old version, and redeploying the applications.

Refer to the references section to learn more about major upgrades of JBoss EAP.

The process to uninstall JBoss EAP 7 depends on the installation method used:

You can use the provided Unix shell scripts and Windows to start JBoss EAP 7 as either a standalone server, or in domain mode. The standalone.sh, and domain.sh files are in the bin directory in the JBoss EAP installation directory.

If the JBOSS_HOME variable is not defined, it is assumed to point to the parent directory of the script.

To start JBoss EAP with default configurations, run the startup script specific for the desired operating mode:

To stop JBoss EAP, there are three methods:

After JBoss EAP starts, it listens for HTTP connections on port 8080. You can use a web browser to visit the http://localhost:8080 an its welcome page.

A fresh JBoss EAP installation has the following directories under JBOSS_HOME:

Figure 1.6: JBoss EAP 7 installation directories

[user@host jboss-eap-7.4]$ tree -d -L 2
.
├── appclient
│   └── configuration
├── bin
│   ├── client
│   └── init.d
├── docs
│   ├── examples
│   ├── licenses
│   └── schema
├── domain
│   ├── configuration
│   └── tmp
├── migration
│   └── configuration
├── modules
│   └── system
├── standalone
│   ├── configuration
│   ├── deployments
│   ├── lib
│   └── tmp
└── welcome-content
    ├── fonts
    └── images

The following bullets describe the main directories:

The contents of these and other JBoss EAP installation directories are examined throughout the remainder of this book. For now, notice that the domain, and standalone directories have similar structure, including a configuration directory that contains the XML configuration files for each operating mode, and a logs directory that might be useful in troubleshooting startup failures.

A developer can install JBoss EAP 7 into their personal home directory and run a standalone server instance or host controller under their own OS user account. For production environments, there are recommended practices to follow for any server-based software.

Please check with the senior system administrator for the specific set of recommended practices for your organization. They probably include at least the following ones for GNU/Linux operating systems:

You can add the JBoss EAP system service to RHEL by performing the following steps:

Using systemctl and init scripts is a common Linux system administration task. Please, inspect the RHEL 9 product documentation for more details, or ask for help from an experienced Unix system administrator.

The most common recommended practices just described are already implemented by the RPM installation method, but have to be implemented manually for the ZIP file method and the JAR installer.

JBoss EAP 7 also includes batch scripts and executable files for installation and running as a Windows service. The Windows installation is not covered in this course.