How to use JMX in Alfresco
Today I compile several tips about enabling and getting JMX
information in Alfresco ECM.
1. Enabling JMX in Alfresco Enterprise
For enabling JMX in Alfresco Enterprise, check the documentation of
your Alfresco version:
- https://docs.alfresco.com/5.0/tasks/jmx-access.html
- https://github.com/zylklab/alfresco-nagios/blob/master/JMX.md#enabling-jmx-in-alfresco-enterprise
The service URL is:
service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://localhost:50500/alfresco/jmxrmi
2. Enabling JMX in Alfresco Community
First, just remember that Alfresco JMX objects are not available in
Alfresco Community, but useful information may be used from java,
tomcat or operating system JMX objects available. For enabling JMX, we
need to add these properties in setenv.sh
CATALINA_OPTS="-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote $CATALINA_OPTS " CATALINA_OPTS="-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=9999 $CATALINA_OPTS " CATALINA_OPTS="-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false $CATALINA_OPTS " CATALINA_OPTS="-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=true $CATALINA_OPTS " CATALINA_OPTS="-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.password.file=/opt/alfresco52g/tomcat/webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/alfresco-jmxrmi.password $CATALINA_OPTS " CATALINA_OPTS="-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.access.file=/opt/alfresco52g/tomcat/webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/alfresco-jmxrmi.access $CATALINA_OPTS " export $CATALINA_OPTS
Please note, that the service URL is something different:
service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://localhost:9999/jmxrmi
Besides, you may need to put alfresco-jmxrmi.password in read-only
mode. If not, tomcat will not start:
$ chmod 600 /opt/alfresco52g/tomcat/webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/alfresco-jmxrmi.password
3. Enabling JMX via Jolokia
As described in jolokia.org, Jolokia
is a JMX-HTTP bridge giving an alternative to JSR-160 connectors. It
is an agent based approach with support for many platforms. For using
it, you just need to copy the corresponding
jolokia.war (for jolokia http endpoint) in webapps
directory and to install some helper utils like
jmx4perl or j4psh for consuming the
http bridge. The main con is just having to deploy jolokia.war in all
your application servers to monitor.
4. Enabling JMX via manager proxy servlet
This is not the best aproximation, but manager app is installed in
Tomcat by default. For example, if you use the default installer in
Alfresco, the Tomcat manager application is deployed under webapps
directory. You may enable JMXProxy servlet for monitoring JMX
variables in Alfresco Community. The main problem is that the JMX info
provided is not JSON or XML based-
5. Some notes about JMX clients
A final comment regarding JMX clients and utilities:
-
jconsole and jvisualvm (with the
corresponding mbean plugins) – they come with Oracle JVM. Both, they
are the first you should use for browsing mbeans, getting monitoring
information, enabling loggers, or restarting subsystems. -
jmxterm is text-based alternative that it is very
useful in remote linux servers with no gui options. -
jmx4perl and j4psh are useful
tools for jolokia related bridge -
check_jmx.jar plugin is also a java command line
helper coming from Nagios JMX plugin for Alfresco.
Additional Links:
- JMXterm : https://www.zylk.net/en/web-2-0/blog/-/blogs/jmx-command-line-recipes-for-alfresco-revisited
- More about JMXTerm : https://www.zylk.net/en/web-2-0/blog/-/blogs/more-about-jmxterm-and-alfresco
- Jolokia: https://jolokia.org/tutorial.html
- Alfresco Nagios JMX plugin : https://github.com/toniblyx/alfresco-nagios-and-icinga-plugin
