Axis2/rampart cryptography problem with signaturePropFile

Question

I have problem with WebService client that has to use WS-Security. My client is written with axis2. It works when I do not enable cryptography (of course with my server emulator). I enabled cryptography by adding to axis.xml:

<!--Signature and Encryption : Using the request's certificate-->
<module ref="rampart" />

<parameter name="OutflowSecurity">
  <action>
    <items>Signature</items>
    <user>mn</user>
      <passwordCallbackClass>PWCallback</passwordCallbackClass>
      <signaturePropFile>client.properties</signaturePropFile>
    <signatureKeyIdentifier>SKIKeyIdentifier</signatureKeyIdentifier>
    <signatureParts>{Element}{http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/}Body&lt;/signatureParts&gt;
  </action>
</parameter> 

Now, when I invoke client from Eclipse with arguments:

-Daxis2.xml=axis-repo/conf/axis2.xml -Daxis2.repo=axis-repo

I got:

org.apache.axis2.AxisFault: CryptoFactory: Cannot load properties: client.properties
at org.apache.rampart.handler.WSDoAllSender.processMessage(WSDoAllSender.java:67)
at org.apache.rampart.handler.WSDoAllHandler.invoke(WSDoAllHandler.java:72)
at org.apache.axis2.engine.Phase.invoke(Phase.java:318)
at org.apache.axis2.engine.AxisEngine.invoke(AxisEngine.java:251)
at org.apache.axis2.engine.AxisEngine.send(AxisEngine.java:416)
at org.apache.axis2.description.OutInAxisOperationClient.send(OutInAxisOperation.java:402)
at org.apache.axis2.description.OutInAxisOperationClient.executeImpl(OutInAxisOperation.java:229)
at org.apache.axis2.client.OperationClient.execute(OperationClient.java:165)
...
Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: CryptoFactory: Cannot load properties: client.properties
at org.apache.ws.security.components.crypto.CryptoFactory.getProperties(CryptoFactory.java:258)
at org.apache.ws.security.components.crypto.CryptoFactory.getInstance(CryptoFactory.java:171)
at org.apache.ws.security.handler.WSHandler.loadSignatureCrypto(WSHandler.java:431)
at org.apache.ws.security.handler.WSHandler.doSenderAction(WSHandler.java:137)
at org.apache.rampart.handler.WSDoAllSender.processBasic(WSDoAllSender.java:201)
at org.apache.rampart.handler.WSDoAllSender.processMessage(WSDoAllSender.java:64)
... 9 more
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.apache.ws.security.components.crypto.CryptoFactory.getProperties(CryptoFactory.java:253)
... 14 more

I'm able to open client.properties as File object. I tried to put this file in various directories or changed its name to use full path (both with slashes, and backslashes while I work on Windows) but nothing helps.

My client.properties file looks like:

org.apache.ws.security.crypto.provider=org.apache.ws.security.components.crypto.Merlin
org.apache.ws.security.crypto.merlin.keystore.type=jks
org.apache.ws.security.crypto.merlin.keystore.password=mn
org.apache.ws.security.crypto.merlin.file=mn_keystore.ks

Any idea why I got this error?

Answer 1

I have found that I have to add client.properties and mn_keystore.ks to wss4j-1.5.8.jar. I don't know if it is by design. My preference is to have both files out of this .jar library.

EDIT: on other environment I tried with separate client.properties and it worked! Now wss4j-1.5.8.jar is as original, without configuration and keystore. I don't know why this work, and this not worked earlier :(