Changing ports in JBoss

If you are running JBoss and find some of the ports it requires (and it requires a few) are in use or if you wish to run multiple copies of JBoss, there is a quick and easy way to change the ports.

There are three sets of ports defined for JBoss. They are referred to as 'ports-default', 'ports-01' and 'ports-02'. The ports-default are the ones we all know and love, e.g. 8080 for the HTTP, 1098 for RMI, etc. The ports-01 are the same numbers but add 100. So the HTTP port becomes 8180, 1198 for RMI, etc. The ports-02 are the same numbers but add 200 to the default ports. So HTTP becomes 8280, 1298 for RMI, etc.

If you go to the JBOSS_HOME (the directory you unzipped the JBoss files into) you will find a server/ directory. In the server/ directory is usually an all/, default/ and minimal/ directory. This works for all of them but lets look at the default/ directory. In the default/ directory is a conf/ directory. So the directory we are looking in would be $JBOSS_HOME/server/default/conf/ (or %JBOSS_HOME%\server\default\conf\ on Windows).

In this directory is a jboss-service.xml file. Open this file, with a text editor, and search for Service Binding. When you find it you will see something like:

<!-- ==================================================================== -->
   <!-- Service Binding                                                      -->
   <!-- ==================================================================== -->

   <!-- Automatically activated when generatting the clustering environment -->
   <!-- @TESTSUITE_CLUSTER_CONFIG@ -->

   <!--
      | Binding service manager for port/host mapping. This is a sample
      | config that demonstrates a JBoss instances with a server name 'ports-01'
      | loading its bindings from an XML file using the ServicesStoreFactory
      | implementation returned by the XMLServicesStoreFactory.
      |
      | ServerName: The unique name assigned to a JBoss server instance for
      | lookup purposes. This allows a single ServicesStore to handle mulitiple
      | JBoss servers.
      |
      | StoreURL: The URL string passed to org.jboss.services.binding.ServicesStore
      | during initialization that specifies how to connect to the bindings store.
      | StoreFactory: The org.jboss.services.binding.ServicesStoreFactory interface
      | implementation to create to obtain the ServicesStore instance.

   <mbean code="org.jboss.services.binding.ServiceBindingManager"
     name="jboss.system:service=ServiceBindingManager">
     <attribute name="ServerName">ports-01</attribute>
     <attribute name="StoreURL">${jboss.home.url}/docs/examples/binding-manager/sample-bindings.xml</attribute>
     <attribute name="StoreFactoryClassName">
       org.jboss.services.binding.XMLServicesStoreFactory
     </attribute>
   </mbean>
   -->

You will notice at the bottom is -->. This means the <mbean> tag is inside a comment block. If you move the --> to above the start of the <mbean> tag, so you have:

<!-- ==================================================================== -->
   <!-- Service Binding                                                      -->
   <!-- ==================================================================== -->

   <!-- Automatically activated when generatting the clustering environment -->
   <!-- @TESTSUITE_CLUSTER_CONFIG@ -->

   <!--
      | Binding service manager for port/host mapping. This is a sample
      | config that demonstrates a JBoss instances with a server name 'ports-01'
      | loading its bindings from an XML file using the ServicesStoreFactory
      | implementation returned by the XMLServicesStoreFactory.
      |
      | ServerName: The unique name assigned to a JBoss server instance for
      | lookup purposes. This allows a single ServicesStore to handle mulitiple
      | JBoss servers.
      |
      | StoreURL: The URL string passed to org.jboss.services.binding.ServicesStore
      | during initialization that specifies how to connect to the bindings store.
      | StoreFactory: The org.jboss.services.binding.ServicesStoreFactory interface
      | implementation to create to obtain the ServicesStore instance.
   -->

   <mbean code="org.jboss.services.binding.ServiceBindingManager"
     name="jboss.system:service=ServiceBindingManager">
     <attribute name="ServerName">ports-01</attribute>
     <attribute name="StoreURL">${jboss.home.url}/docs/examples/binding-manager/sample-bindings.xml</attribute>
     <attribute name="StoreFactoryClassName">
       org.jboss.services.binding.XMLServicesStoreFactory
     </attribute>
   </mbean>

The <mbean> will no longer be commented out. Notice the ports-01 in the <mbean>. This will cause JBoss to start up with the different ports. You can also change this to ports-02 and run a third copy of JBoss. Good if you want to create a cluster.

Personally, I copy the default/ directory and save it as 01/ and another copy as 02/. I then edit the jboss-service.xml in 01/ to use ports-01 and the jboss-service.xml in 02/ to use ports-02. So now I have default, 01 and 02 to match with ports-default, ports-01 and ports-02.