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Chapter 14. Applying JBoss Patches from the Patch RSS Feed

Content management can be used to apply cumulative patches to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4. By default, the JBoss ON server comes pre-configured with the JBoss Patch Content Source and JBoss Patch Repository.

Note

Patch updates using the Patch RSS Feed is not supported for JBoss Enterprise Application platform 5 or newer.

14.1. Planning How to Patch JBoss Resources

JBoss ON can automatically apply patches as they are available in the JBoss Customer Portal (CP). When a patch is released, an RSS feed on the Customer Portal is updated, and JBoss ON monitors that feed and lists the latest patches in the GUI.
There are two parts to planning how to apply patches:
  • Identifying and configuring content sources
  • Planning how to execute manual steps

14.1.1. Identifying Content Sources

A content source connects a JBoss ON server to some kind of content delivery mechanism. With JBoss products, the content source is the Customer Portal, which contains all patches for all JBoss products. (A content source can be another content repository, depending on your products and environment.)
A content source identifies a location. A repository within JBoss ON maps a content source to the resources in the inventory that the patches are applied to.
For JBoss patches, the default content provider connects the JBoss ON server to the cumulative patches provided by the JBoss Customer Service Portal. The default repository associated with the content provider is where the metadata about the patches and the patches themselves are stored within JBoss ON.
The JBoss ON agent is the entity which actually executes the patching process on a resource. The agent is informed of updates, pulls the information from the server, and then updates the local JAR and class files within the managed JBoss instance. The patching process runs independently of any server configuration profile or base configuration.
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4 can receive and apply patch updates through the JBoss Customer Portal feed in JBoss ON.

Note

Patch updates using the Patch RSS Feed is not supported for JBoss Enterprise Application platform 5 or newer.

Note

A Customer Portal feed is only available for a product or a specific version of a product if there is a patch in the Customer Portal for that product. JBoss ON depends on the JBoss Customer Portal to provide patch information.

14.1.2. Planning Manual Steps

Some patches require additional, manual changes, such as editing an XML configuration file. There are several different situations that require manual intervention:
  • The file to be patched is not present in the configuration.
  • There are files that need to be removed manually.
  • Configuration files, such as XML or Java properties files, require patches that need to be applied manually.
  • Seam is being used and must be patched manually.
Basically, admin intervention is required to resolve anything that is outside the default configuration, like merging in custom configuration or updating custom libraries.
JBoss ON performs the standard steps required to apply patches to a JBoss instance, but it does not (and should not) have any way to parse and then merge changes in the configuration. JBoss ON does not attempt to determine, value, and apply custom changes. That sort of heuristic is best performed by an administrator.
Any manual steps which are required to complete the patch are listed in the content update summary after the patch is applied.