How to install WildFly on CentOS 7

Learn how to install WildFly on CentOS 7 with our step-by-step guide. Follow our comprehensive instructions to set up and configure WildFly, ensuring a smooth installation process on your CentOS 7 system. #centlinux #linux #jboss

What is WildFly?

WildFly, formerly known as JBoss AS (Application Server), is the free and open-source Java EE Application Server supported by JBoss community. Red Hat also developed a commercial version of WildFly, named as JBoss EAP (Enterprise Application Platform). JBoss EAP is also open-source, but Red Hat charges to provide a support subscription.

WildFly has full stack support for Java EE and it is a certified Java EE conatiner. Currently, an stable version 16 of WildFly is available. In this article, we will install WildFly on CentOS 7, Configure WildFly Administration Console for Remote Access and at the end Deploy a Java Application on WildFly Server.

Recommended Online Training: Learn Bash Shell in Linux for Beginners

Linux Server Specification

We have a minimally installed CentOS 7 server with following specifications.

• Hostname – wildfly-01.example.com
• IP Address – 192.168.116.168/24
• Operating System – CentOS 7.6
• WildFly version – 16.0.0

Read Also: How to install WildFly on CentOS 8

Install OpenJDK on CentOS 7

Connect with wildfly-01.example.com using ssh as root user.

WildFly is a Java based application platform, therefore it requires a JDK (Java Development Kit) to be installed on the server.

WildFly 16 requires Java EE 8 or above, therefore, we are installing OpenJDK 8 using yum command.

# yum install -y java-1.8.0-openjdk

Set Java related enironment variables.

# echo "export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.212.b04-0.el7_6.x86_64" >> /etc/profile
# . /etc/profile
# env | grep JAVA_HOME
JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.212.b04-0.el7_6.x86_64

Ensure Java installation by checking the version.

# java -version
openjdk version "1.8.0_212"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_212-b04)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.212-b04, mixed mode)

OpenJDK 8 has been installed on CentOS 7 server.

Install WildFly on CentOS 7

Create a user to own WildFly software.

# useradd -r -d /opt/wildfly -s /sbin/nologin wildfly

We have create a system user wildfly without login privileges and with a custom home directory.

Latest or previous releases of WildFly are available on their website. We are downloading Java EE Full & Web Distribution (16.0.0.Final) in TGZ format.

# cd /tmp
# curl -O https://download.jboss.org/wildfly/16.0.0.Final/wildfly-16.0.0.Final.tar.gz
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  172M  100  172M    0     0   568k      0  0:05:10  0:05:10 --:--:--  595k

Extract TGZ file in /opt directory to install WildFly on CentOS 7.

# tar xf wildfly-16.0.0.Final.tar.gz -C /opt/

Create a symbolic link /opt/wildfly for WildFly installation directory. You will find this symbolic link quiet useful, if you want to upgrade / downgrade WildFly to a different version.

# ln -s /opt/wildfly-16.0.0.Final/ /opt/wildfly

Change owner of the /opt/wildfly directory to wildfly user.

# chown -RH wildfly:wildfly /opt/wildfly

Create a Systemd service for WildFly

Create WildFly configurations in /etc directory.

# mkdir /etc/wildfly
# cp /opt/wildfly/docs/contrib/scripts/systemd/wildfly.conf /etc/wildfly/

Check WildFly configurations.

# cat /etc/wildfly/wildfly.conf
# The configuration you want to run
WILDFLY_CONFIG=standalone.xml

# The mode you want to run
WILDFLY_MODE=standalone

# The address to bind to
WILDFLY_BIND=0.0.0.0

By default, WildFly runs in Standalone mode with only required technologies. You can customize configurations according to your requirements. For more information please refer to WildFly 16 documentation.

Copy the launch.sh script in /opt/wildfly/bin directory. This file is required to start WildFly as a service.

# cp /opt/wildfly/docs/contrib/scripts/systemd/launch.sh /opt/wildfly/bin/

Copy WildFly service unit in Systemd configuration directory.

# cp /opt/wildfly/docs/contrib/scripts/systemd/wildfly.service /usr/lib/systemd/system/

Create the directory to hold PIDfile for WildFly service.

# mkdir /var/run/wildfly/
# chown -R wildfly:wildfly /var/run/wildfly/

Enable and start WildFly service.

# systemctl enable wildfly.service
Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/wildfly.service to /usr/lib/systemd/system/wildfly.service.
# systemctl start wildfly.service

Configure Linux Firewall

Allow WildFly service port in Linux firewall.

# firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=8080/tcp
success
# firewall-cmd --reload
success

Browse URL http://wildfly-01.example.com:8080/ in a client’s browser.

It shows that WildFly has been installed successfully on our CentOS 7 server and its service is running on designated port.

Configure WildFly Administration Console for Remote Access

By default, WildFly Administration Console is running on localhost. If we want to access it across the network, then we have to configure it accordingly.

To login to WildFly Administration console, we need an Admin user. Therefore, create an Admin user with following script.

# /opt/wildfly/bin/add-user.sh

What type of user do you wish to add?
 a) Management User (mgmt-users.properties)
 b) Application User (application-users.properties)
(a): a

Enter the details of the new user to add.
Using realm 'ManagementRealm' as discovered from the existing property files.
Username : ahmer
Password recommendations are listed below. To modify these restrictions edit the add-user.properties configuration file.
 - The password should be different from the username
 - The password should not be one of the following restricted values {root, admin, administrator}
 - The password should contain at least 8 characters, 1 alphabetic character(s), 1 digit(s), 1 non-alphanumeric symbol(s)
Password :
Re-enter Password :
What groups do you want this user to belong to? (Please enter a comma separated list, or leave blank for none)[  ]:
About to add user 'ahmer' for realm 'ManagementRealm'
Is this correct yes/no? yes
Added user 'ahmer' to file '/opt/wildfly-16.0.0.Final/standalone/configuration/mgmt-users.properties'
Added user 'ahmer' to file '/opt/wildfly-16.0.0.Final/domain/configuration/mgmt-users.properties'
Added user 'ahmer' with groups  to file '/opt/wildfly-16.0.0.Final/standalone/configuration/mgmt-groups.properties'
Added user 'ahmer' with groups  to file '/opt/wildfly-16.0.0.Final/domain/configuration/mgmt-groups.properties'
Is this new user going to be used for one AS process to connect to another AS process?
e.g. for a slave host controller connecting to the master or for a Remoting connection for server to server EJB calls.
yes/no? yes
To represent the user add the following to the server-identities definition <secret value="QWhtZXJAMTIzNA==" />

Create a environment variable in /etc/wildfly/wildfly.conf.

# cat >> /etc/wildfly/wildfly.conf << EOF
> # the address to bind console to
> WILDFLY_CONSOLE_BIND=0.0.0.0
> EOF

Edit /opt/wildfly/bin/launch.sh script.

# vi /opt/wildfly/bin/launch.sh

and update it as follows

#!/bin/bash

if [ "x$WILDFLY_HOME" = "x" ]; then
    WILDFLY_HOME="/opt/wildfly"
fi

if [[ "$1" == "domain" ]]; then
    $WILDFLY_HOME/bin/domain.sh -c $2 -b $3 -bmanagement $4
else
    $WILDFLY_HOME/bin/standalone.sh -c $2 -b $3 -bmanagement $4
fi

Save and exit.

Finally edit WildFly service.

# vi /usr/lib/systemd/system/wildfly.service

and edit the settings as follows.

[Unit]
Description=The WildFly Application Server
After=syslog.target network.target
Before=httpd.service

[Service]
Environment=LAUNCH_JBOSS_IN_BACKGROUND=1
EnvironmentFile=-/etc/wildfly/wildfly.conf
User=wildfly
LimitNOFILE=102642
PIDFile=/var/run/wildfly/wildfly.pid
ExecStart=/opt/wildfly/bin/launch.sh $WILDFLY_MODE $WILDFLY_CONFIG $WILDFLY_BIND $WILDFLY_CONSOLE_BIND
StandardOutput=null

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Restart WildFly service.

# systemctl daemon-reload
# systemctl restart wildfly.service

Allow service port of WildFly Administration Console in Linux firewall.

# firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=9990/tcp
success
# firewall-cmd --reload
success

Browse URL http://wildfly-01.example.com:9990/console from a client’s browser, to access WildFly Administration Console.

Login using the admin user, that we have created above.

We are now reached at the Dashboard of the WildFly Administration Console.

Deploy a Java Application in WildFly Server

Download a Helloworld Java Application from GitHub.

# cd /opt/wildfly/standalone/deployments/
# curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aeimer/java-example-helloworld-war/master/dist/helloworld.war
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 74333  100 74333    0     0  20801      0  0:00:03  0:00:03 --:--:-- 20798

Check files in deployments directory..

# ls
helloworld.war  helloworld.war.deployed  README.txt

If there is a file name *.deployed, it means that the Java application has been deployed successfully. Otherwise you may find *.failed file here.

For more details you can check WildFly server logs.

# tail /opt/wildfly/standalone/log/server.log  | grep helloworld
2019-05-18 14:49:35,438 INFO  [org.jboss.as.server.deployment] (MSC service thread 1-1) WFLYSRV0027: Starting deployment of "helloworld.war" (runtime-name: "helloworld.war")
2019-05-18 14:49:38,831 INFO  [org.wildfly.extension.undertow] (ServerService Thread Pool -- 77) WFLYUT0021: Registered web context: '/helloworld' for server 'default-server'
2019-05-18 14:49:39,016 INFO  [org.jboss.as.server] (DeploymentScanner-threads - 2) WFLYSRV0010: Deployed "helloworld.war" (runtime-name : "helloworld.war")

Browse URL http://wildfly-01.example.com:8080/helloworld/ from a client’s browser.

Our HelloWorld Java application has been deployed on WildFly server.

We have successfully install WildFly on CentOS 7, configured Administration Console and deployed a Java App on WildFly server. To start using WildFly you can either refer to WildFly 16 documentation or read WildFly Administration Guide (PAID LINK) by ItBuzzPress.

Final Thoughts

Installing WildFly on CentOS 7 can seem daunting, but with the right guidance, it becomes a manageable task. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you’ll have your WildFly server up and running smoothly. If you encounter any issues or need personalized assistance, I’m here to help! Check out my Fiverr gig for expert support and tailored solutions for your WildFly installation and other server management needs.

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