Problem using JConsole remotely with JBoss 4.2.2 with app that uses JWS

Question

I am trying to set up JBoss 4.2.2 and JConsole for remote monitoring. As per many of the how-to's I have found on the web to do this you need to enable jmxremote by setting the following options in run.conf. (I realize the other two opts disable authentication)

JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=11099"
JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false"
JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false"

Which results in the following exception:

13:06:56,418 INFO [TomcatDeployer] performDeployInternal :: deploy, ctxPath=/services, warUrl=.../tmp/deploy/tmp34585xxxxxxxxx.ear-contents/mDate-Services-exp.war/
13:06:57,706 WARN [AbstractServerConfig] getWebServicePort :: Unable to calculate 'WebServicePort', using default '8080'
13:06:57,711 WARN [AbstractServerConfig] getWebServicePort :: Unable to calculate 'WebServicePort', using default '8080'
13:06:58,070 WARN [AbstractServerConfig] getWebServicePort :: Unable to calculate 'WebServicePort', using default '8080'
13:06:58,071 WARN [AbstractServerConfig] getWebServicePort :: Unable to calculate 'WebServicePort', using default '8080'
13:06:58,138 ERROR [MainDeployer] start :: Could not start deployment: file:/opt/jboss-4.2.2.GA/server/default/tmp/deploy/tmp34585xxxxxxxxx.ear-contents/xxxxx-Services.war
java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.jboss.wsf.stack.jbws.WSDLFilePublisher.getPublishLocation(WSDLFilePublisher.java:303)
at org.jboss.wsf.stack.jbws.WSDLFilePublisher.publishWsdlFiles(WSDLFilePublisher.java:103)
at org.jboss.wsf.stack.jbws.PublishContractDeploymentAspect.create(PublishContractDeploymentAspect.java:52)
at org.jboss.wsf.framework.deployment.DeploymentAspectManagerImpl.deploy(DeploymentAspectManagerImpl.java:115)
at org.jboss.wsf.container.jboss42.ArchiveDeployerHook.deploy(ArchiveDeployerHook.java:97) 
...

My application uses JWS which according to this bug:

https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBWS-1943

Suggests this workaround:

JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Djavax.management.builder.initial=org.jboss.system.server.jmx.MBeanServerBuilderImpl"
JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Djboss.platform.mbeanserver"
JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote"

(http://jbossws.jboss.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=FAQ#How_to_use_JDK_JMX_JConsole_with_JBossWS.3F)

I've tried that however that then throws the following exception while trying to deploy a sar file in my ear which only contains on class which implements Schedulable for a couple of scheduled jobs my application requires:

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at EDU.oswego.cs.dl.util.concurrent.ConcurrentReaderHashMap.hash(ConcurrentReaderHashMap.java:298)
at EDU.oswego.cs.dl.util.concurrent.ConcurrentReaderHashMap.get(ConcurrentReaderHashMap.java:410)
at org.jboss.mx.server.registry.BasicMBeanRegistry.getMBeanMap(BasicMBeanRegistry.java:959)
at org.jboss.mx.server.registry.BasicMBeanRegistry.contains(BasicMBeanRegistry.java:577)

Any suggestions on where to go from here?

EDIT:

I have also tried the following variation:

JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -DmbipropertyFile=../server/default/conf/mbi.properties  -DpropertyFile=../server/default/conf/mdate.properties -Dwicket.configuration=DEVELOPMENT"
JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Djavax.management.builder.initial=org.jboss.system.server.jmx.MBeanServerBuilderImpl"
JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Djboss.platform.mbeanserver"
JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote"

I'm using JDK 1.6.0_01-b06

Answer 1

I have honestly never tried this remoting approach. But, if both your client machine and the server happen to both be linux boxes or similar *nixes with SSH, then you can ssh -XCA to the server and start JConsole on the server and have the GUI display on your client machine with X port forwarding. A JConsole running locally to the server JVM you want to monitor should not have any trouble connecting.

I personally think that's a nifty trick but I realize that it dosn't really solve the problem of getting JConsole to connect remotely through JWS.

Answer 2

First thing I would do is to delete both /tmp and /work directories under JBoss /default and redeploy the WAR. If that doesn't, I would upgrade the JDK to use a more recent version of 1.6. 1.6.0_01 is pretty old.

Answer 3

I'm not sure if there's a specific reason you're trying to use WS to access the mbean server, but with JConsole you can directly access a remote JVM. To do this use "service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://<remote-machine>:<port>/jmxrmi" (where <remote-machine> is whatever machine your trying to connect to and <port> is 11099) as the remote process.

I have used this to connect to any 1.6 JVM that exposes an mbean server (JBoss, ActiveMQ, etc).

Answer 4

I don't know if this is related, but JBoss has a tendency to redirect to itself. If you connect to a host, say jboss.localdomain:3873, wanting to connect to a ejb, JBoss might lookup its own hostname and redirect to the address it gets from there. If you have a public hostname, it might find that instead (say jboss.publicdomain.com), and tell the client to reconnect to jboss.publicdomain.com:1099. Depending on your DNS, this might or might not be a reachable address from your client.

There are various varations of this problem, and as a bonus, sometimes the initial "connection check" works, so the client app deploys, but fails later on connect.

Answer 5

Had a similar issue, but with JBoss Seam: take a look at JBSEAM-4029. As one of the workarounds it suggests to override the class running into the NPE - in Seam's case the JBossClusterMonitor.

I bet the JWS code is running into exact same issue, i.e. ending up calling MBeanServerFactory.findMBeanServer(null) at some point in time. The stack trace should reveal which exact class does this.