Deploying applications to Glassfish Server - The Hard Way

Download a copy of Glassfish v5.1, and extract files into your local system.

Start and Stop Glassfish Server

In the <Glassfish dir>/glassfish/bin folder, there are a few command tools used to control Glassfish server.

Open your terminal, enter <Glassfish dir>/glassfish/bin.

Execute the following command to start Glassfish Server.

# Linux
./startserv.sh
# windows
startserv

By default, it will start with the default domain doman1, if you want to start the server with a different one, add the domain name to the command line.

startserv domain2

To stop a running Glassfish Server, jus terminate the process by Ctrl+C , or execute the following command in another terminal window.

# Linux
./stopserv.sh
# windows
stopserv

Alternatively, you can use the asadmin utility in <Glassfish dir>/bin to start the server with a specific domain in background.

# asadmin start-domain domain1
Waiting for domain1 to start ................................................
Successfully started the domain : domain1
domain  Location: D:\appsvr\glassfish5\glassfish\domains\domain1
Log File: D:\appsvr\glassfish5\glassfish\domains\domain1\logs\server.log
Admin Port: 4848
Command start-domain executed successfully.

Similarly, use asadmin stop-domain domain1 to stop a domain.

# asadmin stop-domain domain1
Waiting for the domain to stop .
Command stop-domain executed successfully.

Deploy applications

Firstly package the application into a war package.

# mvn clean package
...
[INFO] --- maven-war-plugin:2.2:war (default-war) @ jakartaee8-starter ---
...
[INFO] Building war: D:\hantsylabs\jakartaee8-starter\target\jakartaee8-starter.war
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time:  12.449 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2020-02-18T17:50:43+08:00
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

After it is done there is a jakartaee8-starter.war is located in the target folder.

Copy this file to <Glassfish dir>/glassfish/domains/domain1/autodeploy/.

In the Glassfish console, you will see the following deployment info.

Selecting file D:\appsvr\glassfish5\glassfish\domains\domain1\autodeploy\jakartaee8-starter.war for autodeployment
...
Clustered CDI Event bus initialized|
...
Initializing Soteria 1.1-b01 for context '/jakartaee8-starter'
...
Loading application [jakartaee8-starter] at [/jakartaee8-starter]
...
jakartaee8-starter was successfully deployed in 1,956 milliseconds
...
[AutoDeploy] Successfully autodeployed : D:\appsvr\glassfish5\glassfish\domains\domain1\autodeploy\jakartaee8-starter.war.

To undeploy an applicaiton, just delete jakartaee8-starter.war in the <Glassfish dir>/glassfish/domains/domain1/autodeploy/.

In the Glassfish console, it displays the undeployment progress.

Autoundeploying application:  jakartaee8-starter
...
[AutoDeploy] Successfully autoundeployed : D:\appsvr\glassfish5\glassfish\domains\domain1\autodeploy\jakartaee8-starter.war.

Add an administration user

An administrator user is required to access Admin Console or remote deployment from Maven plugin, etc.

By default, Glassfish shipped an admin user with an empty password. You can set the password by asadmin command.

Enter <Glassfish dir>/bin , execute the following command to start changing the password of the admin user.

# asadmin change-admin-password
Enter admin user name [default: admin]>
Enter the admin password>
Enter the new admin password>
Enter the new admin password again>
Command change-admin-password executed successfully.

Before you execute this command, make sure your Glassfish server is running.