Installing WildFly on Ubuntu 14.04 cloud server

This post covers the main aspects of installing WildFly on a fresh cloud Ubuntu server (or any clean install). This tutorial shows how WildFly can be configured to be accessed directly. If you want to put WildFly behind Apache using mod_proxy, see this post.

Topics covered: 

Adding swap to a new cloud instance 

• Checking for swap
• Creating swap
• Changing swappiness 

Updating the server using apt-get 

Installing Java

• Downloading the JDK to the server
• Installing the JDK
• Setting the default JDK

Installing WildFly

• Downloading WildFly
• Creating the wildfly user
• Installing the init.d scripts
• Starting WildFly as a service

Configuring WildFly

• Open public interface to all IP's
• Open the management interface to all IP's (optional)
• Remove the welcome content (optional)

Adding swap to a new cloud instance  

Swap is an area on your hard drive that can store data when your RAM is full. First we need to check to see if a swap area is configured:

sudo swapon -s

If you get the headers back only, you have no swap space:

Now lets create a 4 gig swap:

sudo fallocate -l 4G /swapfile

Verify that is has been created and is the correct size

ls -lh /swapfile 

You should see something like this:

Now change the folder permissions:

sudo chmod 600 /swapfile

Set up swap

sudo mkswap /swapfile

You will should see the output below.

Now enable swap

sudo swapon /swapfile

Lets check to see if we have swap space

sudo swapon -s

We should get the following output:

To make the changes permanent you need to update the fstab file

sudo echo '/swapfile   none    swap    sw    0   0' >> /etc/fstab

Update swappiness

Swappiness can be configured between 0 and 100. The nearer to 0 the more data will be put into the RAM rather than the swap.

To view the current swappiness:

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

To change the swapiness to 10:

sudo echo 'vm.swappiness=10' >> /etc/sysctl.conf

This only takes effect on reboot, so also run this command to effect this change immediately

sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=10

Updating the server using apt-get 

If you have not already updated your new server, do so now:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Installing Java

Personally I like to install the Oracle JDK rather than OpenJDK. As you need to accept the Oracle licence before downloading, you will need to browse to the Java download page using your browser. Agree to the terms, and then click on download. As soon as it starts, pause it, and copy the download link.
Go to your server and use wget to download the file using the download link you just copied:

wget -c http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/8u31-b13/jdk-8u31-linux-x64.tar.gz?AuthParam=1423681612_d8066e1256e66a7a4895ad467fc7cd07

When is has finished downloading, extract it to the /opt/java folder (or any other folder of your choosing)

mkdir /opt/java
tar -xvzf jdk-8u31-linux-x64.tar.gz -C /opt/java

Now add the following to the end of /etc/environment:

JAVA_HOME="/opt/java/jdk1.8.0_31"
PATH="$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH"

Now source the file to load the new $PATH and $JAVA_HOME properties

. /etc/environment

Installing WildFly

First install WildFly by downloading and extracting it to the /opt directory

cd /opt
wget -c http://download.jboss.org/wildfly/8.2.0.Final/wildfly-8.2.0.Final.tar.gz
tar -xzvf wildfly-8.2.0.Final.tar.gz

Create the wildfly user and group

addgroup wildfly
useradd -g wildfly wildfly

Change the ownership of the wildfly folder recursively:

chown -R wildfly:wildfly /opt/wildfly-8.2.0.Final/ 

Create a symbolic link so that if you change WildFly versions, you don't have to update any other configuration:

ln -s wildfly-8.2.0.Final /opt/wildfly

Installing the init.d scripts

To easiest way to start and stop WildFly is to use a startup script. Copy and paste the init.d script within the WildFly install to the /etc/init.d/ folder, change the permissions, and make it executable:

cp /opt/wildfly/bin/init.d/wildfly-init-debian.sh /etc/init.d/wildfly
sudo chown root:root /etc/init.d/wildfly
sudo chmod ug+x /etc/init.d/wildfly

To start/stop WildFly you will simply run the commands

sudo /etc/init.d/wildfly start
sudo /etc/init.d/wildfly stop

Starting WildFly as a service

To enable WildFly to start automatically when the server starts, you need to add it to the linux run-levels:

sudo update-rc.d wildfly defaults 

You should see the following output:

Configuring WildFly - open the public interface to all IP's

To access WildFly from an IP other than 127.0.0.1 (localhost) you will need to update the bind address for the public interface. Update this:

<interface name="public">
    <inet-address value="${jboss.bind.address:127.0.0.1}"/>
</interface>

to this:

<interface name="public">
    <any-address/>
</interface>

You will now be able to access WildFly from any IP using port 8080

Open the management interface to all IP's (optional) 

If you want to access the management console (on port 9990), you will need to update the bind address as you did for the public interface:

<interface name="management">
    <any-address/>
</interface>

You will now be able to access the management interface on port 9990 from any computer.

Remove the welcome content (optional)

If you are deploying your application to the context root, you will need to remove the default welcome content from the WildFly configuration. Remove the lines highlighted in bold from the undertow subsystem in your standalone.xml file

<server name="default-server">
    <http-listener name="default" socket-binding="http"/>
    <host name="default-host" alias="localhost">
        <location name="/" handler="welcome-content"/>
        <filter-ref name="server-header"/>
        <filter-ref name="x-powered-by-header"/>
    </host>
</server>
<handlers>
    <file name="welcome-content" path="${jboss.home.dir}/welcome-content"/>
</handlers>

You will now be able to deploy your application to WildFly and view it on your_ip:8080. Make sure you configure your jboss-web.xml and set the context root to /.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jboss-web>
    <context-root>/</context-root>
</jboss-web>

Enjoy :)