Chapter 3. Key new features and enhancements in the Red Hat JBoss Web Server 5.0

The enhancements introduced by basing the JBoss Web Server 5.0 on Apache Tomcat 9.0.7 rather than Apache Tomcat 8 used by the JBoss Web Server 3.1 include:

<Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener"
    useAprConnector="true" SSLEngine="on"/>

Red Hat Enterprise Linux users installing JBoss Web Server from .zip archives are provided post-install scripts to assist with setting up JBoss Web Server as a systemd or SysV service.

Using the JBoss Web Server with a system daemon provides a method of starting the JBoss Web Server services at system boot. The system daemon also provides start, stop and status check functions.

For setup instructions see: The Red Hat JBoss Web Server 5.0 Installation Guide - Configuring JBoss Web Server to start at boot for .zip installations on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

The Tomcat Password Vault is included in the jws-application-server-5.0.0.zip file used for installing JBoss Web Server and is pre-installed at jws-5.0/tomcat/lib/tomcat-vault.jar and can be used once configured.

For Red Hat Enterprise Linux users installing JBoss Web Server from RPMs using YUM, the Tomcat vault can now be installed using YUM:

yum install jws5-tomcat-vault

As of the JBoss Web Server 5.0, the vault.properties file for the tomcat-vault can be stored outside of <JWS_HOME> in the CATALINA_BASE directory (if set).

To set the CATALINA_BASE directory, follow the instructions in the section 'Advanced Configuration - Multiple Tomcat Instances' in the Running The Apache Tomcat 9.0 Servlet/JSP Container document found on the Apache Tomcat Website.

Note that the default location for CATALINA_BASE is <JWS_HOME>/tomcat/ (also known as CATALINA_HOME).

For more information on the tomcat-vault, see: Using a Password Vault with Red Hat JBoss Web Server 5.0

For more information on setting CATALINA_BASE, see: Apache Tomcat 9: Introduction - Directories and Files

The manager and host-manager web-applications can now only be accessed from the localhost. This is a new default restriction within the context.xml configuration files of the manager applications set using the Remote Address Valve (RemoteAddrValve).

For example:

  <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve"
         allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" />

To view or change this setting, see:

For more information on:

Previous versions of mod_cluster automatically determined which connector to use. As a result, mod_cluster defaulted to the AJP connector and this behavior was difficult to override.

To improve usability, the mod_cluster 1.4 (provided with the JBoss Web Server 5.0) requires a connector to be explicitly set. One or more of the following new attributes require configuration for mod_cluster 1.4:

For example:

<Listener className="org.jboss.modcluster.container.tomcat.ModClusterListener"
    advertise="true"
    advertiseInterface="172.16.27.10"
    advertiseGroupAddress="224.0.1.105"
    advertisePort="23364"
    connectorPort="8009"
/>

For more information on using an Apache HTTP Server as a load balancer for JBoss Web Server, see: Red Hat JBoss Core Services 2.4.29: Apache HTTP Server Connectors and Load Balancing Guide - mod_cluster Connector

For additional information on this change, see: JBoss Developer JIRA: mod_cluster - Expose Tomcat configuration to explicitly specify a connector to register with the proxy

The JBoss Web Server 5.0 includes the listener LoadExternalPropertiesListener, allowing users to load multiple .properties files. The files are specified using the file.N attribute where N specifies the order in which the property files are loaded.

For example:

<Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.LoadExternalPropertiesListener"
        file.0="/path/to/file1.properties"
        file.1="/path/to/file2.properties"
        file.2="/path/to/file3.properties"
        overwrite="false" loadFirst="file.1" />

For more information on using multiple property files, the documentation has been included in jws-application-server-5.0.0.zip, see: <JWS_HOME>/webapps/docs/config/listeners.html#Load_external_properties_files_-_org.apache.catalina.core.LoadExternalPropertiesListener

Log4j is not supported for Red Hat JBoss Web Server 5.0 and is not provided by the Red Hat JBoss Web Server 5.0 packages or maven repository.

To use log4j with JBoss Web Server, log4j 2.x can be downloaded from the Apache Log4j 2 web site.

The JBoss Web Server Hibernate Engine is provided by the Red Hat JBoss Web Server 5.0 Maven Repository.

To download the JBoss Web Server Maven Repository (jboss-web-server-5.0.0.GA-maven-repository.zip), visit the Software Downloads page on the Red Hat Website (available to all JBoss Web Server 5.0 subscribers).

The Hibernate Engine is not provided as a separate .zip package as it was for previous versions of JBoss Web Server.

Embedding tomcat in java applications can be useful for development and providing a dedicated instance of tomcat for shipping java applications to customers.

Tomcat embedded has been included in the Red Hat JBoss Web Server 5.0 Maven Repository.

To download the JBoss Web Server Maven Repository (jboss-web-server-5.0.0.GA-maven-repository.zip), visit the Software Downloads page on the Red Hat Website (available to all JBoss Web Server 5.0 subscribers).

The tomcat embedded artifacts can be found in the maven repository at: jboss-web-server-5.0.0.GA-maven-repository/maven-repository/org/apache/tomcat/embed/

For more information on using tomcat embedded, see the Apache Tomcat 9.0 API documentation: org.apache.catalina.startup - Class Tomcat.