Jakarta EE9 – Wildfly – Elytron – SecurityDomains

With version 11 Wildfly introduced a complete new security concept named ‘Elytron’. This security concept is a little bit confusing on the first look if you have worked with previous versions of Wildfly. To be honest I personally recognized the Elytron framework with version Wildfly 24. Even it it is well documented it took me a while until I get things working. Initially I came across the configuration concept during migrating the Imixs-Workflow project form Jakarta EE8 to Jakarta EE9. As we are using docker images to run our applications we are configuring the Wildfly server by the standalone.xml file and not via the CLI provided by Wildfly. In the following I will show what is important to get a Jakarta EE9 application work with Elytron.

The Elytron Subsystem

Wildfly is separated in its core into subsystems. Each subsystem has its own configuration section in the standalone.xml file. For the Elytron subsystem this is urn:wildfly:elytron:14.0.

If you look into the subsystem configuration you can see that a security domain is split now into the domain and the realm section. A simple FileBased security realm with the realm name ‘imixsrealm’ will look like this:

        <subsystem xmlns="urn:wildfly:elytron:14.0" final-providers="combined-providers" disallowed-providers="OracleUcrypto">
.....
            <security-domains>
.....
              	<!-- imixsrealm filerealm configuration   -->
		<security-domain name="imixsrealm" default-realm="imixsrealm" permission-mapper="default-permission-mapper">
			<realm name="imixsrealm"/>
		</security-domain>
            </security-domains>
            <security-realms>
....
                <!-- imixsrealm filerealm property files -->
                <properties-realm name="imixsrealm" groups-attribute="Roles">
			<users-properties path="sampleapp-users.properties" relative-to="jboss.server.config.dir" digest-realm-name="Application Security" plain-text="true"/>
			<groups-properties path="sampleapp-roles.properties" relative-to="jboss.server.config.dir"/>
		</properties-realm>              
            </security-realms>
.....
        </subsystem>

I added a security-domain with the name ‘imixsrealm’ and also a properties-realm section with the same name where I define the users and roles property files. The attribute plain-text="true" indicates that you store the password in plaintext, which makes testing much easier. Place the sample-app-roles and users property files into the standalone/config/ directory. Do not modify the other sections of the Elytron subsystem!

The content of the sampleapp-users.properties looks like this (with plain text passwords)

admin=adminadmin
manfred=password
anna=password

In the file sampleapp-roles.properties you can assign users to application specific roles:

admin=MANAGERACCESS
manfred=MANAGERACCESS
anna=AUTHORACCESS

So far everything seems to look similar to the old security-domain configuration. But at this moment you new security domain wont work. There are additional steps needed.

The EJB and Web Subsystems

To get the security domain working with your application you need to add the security domain also to the undertow web subsystem. In this subsystem you will find a section ‘application-security-domains’. And in this section you need to add your new security domain as well:

       <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:undertow:12.0" default-server="default-server" default-virtual-host="default-host" default-servlet-container="default" default-security-domain="other" statistics-enabled="${wildfly.undertow.statistics-enabled:${wildfly.statistics-enabled:false}}">
....
            <application-security-domains>
                <application-security-domain name="imixsrealm" security-domain="imixsrealm"/>
                <application-security-domain name="other" security-domain="ApplicationDomain"/>                                            
            </application-security-domains>
        </subsystem>

There is also a subsystem for EJBs “ejb3:9.0” and it becomes important that you add your security domain also there if you have EJBs with the annotations @RolesAllowed or @RunAs

        <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:ejb3:9.0">
...
            <default-security-domain value="other"/>
            <application-security-domains>
                 <application-security-domain name="imixsrealm" security-domain="imixsrealm"/>
                <application-security-domain name="other" security-domain="ApplicationDomain"/>                
            </application-security-domains>
...
        </subsystem>

Now you have completed your configuration in the standalone.xml file

The jboss-web.xml and jboss-ejb3.xml

There are still 2 application specific files which need to be part of your web application.

In the jboss-web.xml you define you custom security domain:

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

and in the jboss-ejb3.xml file:

<?xml version="1.1" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jboss:ejb-jar xmlns:jboss="http://www.jboss.com/xml/ns/javaee"
	xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xmlns:s="urn:security:1.1"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.jboss.com/xml/ns/javaee http://www.jboss.org/j2ee/schema/jboss-ejb3-2_0.xsd http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/ejb-jar_3_1.xsd"
	version="3.1" impl-version="2.0">

	<assembly-descriptor>
		<s:security>
			<ejb-name>*</ejb-name>			
			<s:security-domain>imixsrealm</s:security-domain>
			<!-- This configuration is necessary to enable @runAs for the AdminPService  -->
			<s:missing-method-permissions-deny-access>false</s:missing-method-permissions-deny-access>
		</s:security>
	</assembly-descriptor>

</jboss:ejb-jar>

So finally your Jakarta EE9 application should now deploy and run within Wilfly 24 using the new Elytron Security Framework.

Database Realm / jdbc-realm

It is also easy to use jdbc-realm configuration. You can find general information about Database realms here. The following shows an example how to configure a jdbc-realm with two tables storing an encrypted password and user roles.

<jdbc-realm name="imixsrealm">
    <principal-query sql="select PASSWORD from USERID where ID=?" data-source="office">
        <simple-digest-mapper algorithm="simple-digest-sha-256" password-index="1" hash-encoding="hex"/>
    </principal-query>
          <principal-query sql="select GROUP_ID from USERID_USERGROUP where ID=?" data-source="office">
              <attribute-mapping>
                  <attribute to="Roles" index="1"/>
              </attribute-mapping>
    </principal-query>
</jdbc-realm>           

Note: I am using two queries here as my role definitions are stored in a separate table (USERID_USERGROUP). The password is stored in hex format encrypted with a SHA-256 algorithm.

VisualVM & Wildfly running in Docker

In Imixs-Workflow project we use mostly use Wildfly Server to run the Imixs-Worklfow engine. If you want to profile your workflow instance in details you can use the VisualVM profiling tool. To use this tool when running Wildfly in a container will be the topic of this blog post. You can download VisualVM form Github.

When running Wildfly in a container you need to use the remote profile capabilities of VIsualVM to analyse your services. There for your wildfly server running in a docker container should publish the port 9990 which is also the port for the Wildfly Web Interface. Using the Imixs Wildfly Docker image you can simply launch your server with the option “DEBUG=true”.

Next you need to download the wildfly version running in your container into your local workstation as you need some libraries only contained in the corresponding wildfly version. Go to the Wildfly Download page to download the version your are running in your container.

Lets assume you have extracted the wildfly server packages into the following directory

$ /opt/wildfly-18.0.0.Final

than you can start VisualVM with the following option:

$ ./visualvm -cp:a /opt/wildfly-18.0.0.Final/bin/client/jboss-cli-client.jar  -J-Dmodule.path=/opt/wildfly-18.0.0.Final/modules	

Take note of the correct server path.

Now you can connect to your wildfly server with a new JMX Connection which you can open from the ‘file’ menu in VisualVM

To connec to to use the following URL:

service:jmx:remote+http://0.0.0.0:9990

Note that you may need a admin user account on your wildfly server. If you are unsure open your wildfly web console first form a web browser:

http://0.0.0.0:9990

OpenLiberty – Performance

In the course of our open source project Imixs-Office-Workflow, I have now examined OpenLiberty in more detail. And I came up to the conclusion that OpenLiberty has a very impressive performance.

Docker

I run OpenLiberty in Docker in the version ‘20.0.0.3-full-java8-openj9-ubi’. Our application is a full featured Workflow Management Suite with a Web Interface and also a Rest API. So for OpenLiberty we use the following feature set:

...
	<featureManager>
		<feature>javaee-8.0</feature>
		<feature>microProfile-2.2</feature>>
		<feature>javaMail-1.6</feature>
	</featureManager>
...

As recommended by OpenLiberty I use the following Dockerfile layout:

FROM openliberty/open-liberty:20.0.0.3-full-java8-openj9-ubi
# Copy postgres JDBC driver
COPY ./postgresql-9.4.1212.jar /opt/ol/wlp/lib
# Add config
COPY --chown=1001:0 ./server.xml /config/server.xml

# Activate Debug Mode...
# COPY --chown=1001:0 ./jvm.options /config/

# Copy sample application
COPY ./imixs-office-workflow*.war /config/dropins/

RUN configure.sh

The important part here is the RUN command at the end of the Dockerfile. This script adds the requested XML snippets and grow image to be fit-for-purpose. This makes the docker build process a little bit slower, but the startup of the image is very fast.

I measured a startup time of round about 12 seconds. This is very fast for the size and complexity of this application. And it is a little bit faster than the startup of Wildfly with round about 15 seconds. Only in case of a hot-redeploy of the application Wildfly seems to be a little bit faster (6 seconds) in compare to OpenLiberty (8 seconds).

Open LibertyWildfly
Docker Startup Time12 sec15 sec
Application Hot Deploy8 sec6 sec

Debug Mode

Note: activating the debug port makes OpenLiberty performance very poor. So do not forget to deactivate debugging in productive mode! The debug mode can be activated by providing a jvm.options file like this:

-agentlib:jdwp=transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=n,address=7777

I have commented on this in the Dockerfile example above.

EJB Transaction Timeout in Wildfly

If you have long running transactions, in Wildfly it can happen that you run into a timeout durinng your processing EJB method. In this case you can change the default timeout from 5 minutes via the standalone.xml file:

 <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:transactions:4.0">
  <core-environment>
  <process-id>
  <uuid/>
  </process-id>
  </core-environment>
  <recovery-environment socket-binding="txn-recovery-environment" status-socket-binding="txn-status-manager"/>
  <coordinator-environment default-timeout="1200"/>
  <object-store path="tx-object-store" relative-to="jboss.server.data.dir"/>
</subsystem>

In this example I changed the coordinator-environment default-timeout to  20 minutes

Jenkins – How to Deploy an Artifact Into a Custom Directory

It takes me some time to figure out the right way to deploy an artifact with Jenkins. After a successful build, I wanted to deploy the generated EAR file into a custom directory of my server. After trying several plugins the Artifact Deployer Plugin  seems to me the best solution.

jenkins-01

With this plugin installed you can add a ‘Post-Build-Action’ to your project. The Artefact location can be specified using the wildcards “**/*.war” or “**/*.ear”.  In case of a Maven Project it’s not necessary to add a Base Dir location like it was in earlier releases. The ‘Remote File Location’ is just your target directory. You have also an option to disable the deployment in case the build failed.

So that’s it. If you know other solutions (especially for Wilfly) let me know.

Wildfly – Debugging JPA / Eclipselink

It take me some time to figure out how to debug the JPA / EclipseLink implementation running on Wildfly. My goal was to log the SQL statements generated by EclipseLink.

It’s not necessary to modify the persistance.xml file. Just add into the standalone.xml file the following additional logger categories:

 <logger category="org.eclipse.persistence.sql">
 <level name="DEBUG"/>
 </logger>
 <logger category="org.jboss.as.jpa">
 <level name="DEBUG"/>
 </logger>

And change the log level from the console-handler from ‘INFO’ to ‘DEBUG’

<console-handler name="CONSOLE">
 <level name="INFO"/>
 <formatter>
 <named-formatter name="COLOR-PATTERN"/>
 </formatter>
 </console-handler>

Restart wildfly which is now logging all JPA information.