jccjmx 0.1

Abstract
========

SSH-tunnel friendly monitoring of embedded Java Runtimes using MBeans, Java
Management Extensions (JMX) and Remote Method Invocation (RMI) for Python and
PyLucenet.

Rationale
=========

jccjmx is a convenience helper for JCC and PyLucene to create a JMX RMI
connector at runtime. The usual way to a connector with vmargs
'-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote' (or similar) works only on startup. Also
this opens two ports (one for the connector and one for the RMI registry).
The RMI registry port is assigned dynamically which makes firewall rules
or SSH/SSL tunnels impossible.

jccjmx allows you to start a RMI and JMX connector programmatically without
restarting your Python application. The platform MBean server provides live
monitoring of JRE's memory usage (heap, caches), JRE's CPU usage, Java threads,
attached Python threads and more. The JDK is shipped with two GUI programs
for monitoring: jconsole and jvisualvm.

jccjmx is based on Daniel Fuchs' examples from his blog at Sun (now Oracle).
I've modified his code and ported it from a premain agent to a standalone
class.


Usage
=====

The import order is crucial! You must import and init lucene and jccjmx in
the correct order. Otherwise your process will segfault.

>>> import lucene
>>> import jccjmx

Initialize the VM for both packages. The second initVM() just adds the CLASSPATH
of jccjmx.

>>> lucene.initVM() # doctest: +ELLIPSIS
<jcc.JCCEnv object at 0x...>
>>> jccjmx.initVM() # doctest: +ELLIPSIS
<jcc.JCCEnv object at 0x...>

Create an agent that listens on port 12345. You should create just one
instane of JccJmxAgent during the life time of your application.

>>> agent = jccjmx.JccJmxAgent(12345)

By default the agent is bound to 127.0.0.1. You can specificy another hostname or
IP address with jccjmx.JccJmxAgent("hostname", portnumber).

A RMI is created immediately and bound to "*:port" but no agent is listening yet. You
have to activate is explicitly. This allows you to delay the agent.

>>> agent.isActive()
False
>>> agent.start()
>>> agent.isActive()
True
>>> agent.stop()
>>> agent.isActive()
False

In order to connect from a remote host you need to know the service URL:

>>> agent.getServiceURL()
u'service:jmx:rmi://127.0.0.1:12345/jndi/rmi://127.0.0.1:12345/jmxrmi'

From a remote host:

$ ssh -L12345:127.0.0.1:12345 server
$ jconsole service:jmx:rmi://127.0.0.1:12345/jndi/rmi://127.0.0.1:12345/jmxrmi


Security
========

The RMI registry is always bound to all possible network devices. This
shouldn't be an issue but I can't guarantee it.

jccjmx doesn't use SSL to authenticate clients and encrypt the connection. It's
up to you to use an encrypted tunnel. Future versions of jccjmx may support
SSL.


Trouble shooting
================

Connection refused
------------------

You may get a connection refused error when the RMI hostname isn't set
correctly. jccjmx sets the system property unless it is already set. You can
force a correct hostname with e.g.

-Djava.rmi.server.hostname=127.0.0.1


IPv4 vs. IPv6
-------------

Java prefers IPv6 connections over IPv4 connections and usually binds to
IPv6 TCP. If you are having trouble with a mixed network you can force the
JRE to prefer IPv4 with

-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true


Sources
=======

https://blogs.oracle.com/jmxetc/entry/connecting_through_firewall_using_jmx
https://blogs.oracle.com/jmxetc/entry/more_on_premain_and_jmx
https://blogs.oracle.com/jmxetc/entry/jmx_connecting_through_firewalls_using

Authors
=======

Christian Heimes
Daniel Fuchs (original author of the JMX agent)


Copyright
=========

Original java code::

Copyright 2007 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

JCC wrapper, start/stop features::

Copyright (C) 2012 semantics GmbH

semantics
Kommunikationsmanagement GmbH
Viktoriaallee 45
D-52066 Aachen
Germany

Tel.: +49 241 89 49 89 29
eMail: info(at)semantics.de
http://www.semantics.de/