Apache Portable Runtime and JBoss Web

Introduction

JBoss Web can use the Apache Portable Runtime to provide superior scalability, performance, and better integration with native server technologies. The Apache Portable Runtime is a highly portable library that is at the heart of Apache HTTP Server 2.x. APR has many uses, including access to advanced IO functionality (such as sendfile, epoll and OpenSSL), OS level functionality (random number generation, system status, etc), and native process handling (shared memory, NT pipes and Unix sockets).

These features allows making JBoss Web a general purpose webserver, will enable much better integration with other native web technologies, and overall make Java much more viable as a full fledged webserver platform rather than simply a backend focused technology.

JBoss Native provides bundle for severals platforms. The bundles contain APR, OpenSSL and tc-native ready to use.

Installation

APR support requires three main native components to be installed:

APR library
JNI wrappers for APR used by JBoss Web (libtcnative)
OpenSSL libraries

Windows

Windows binaries are provided for tcnative-1, which is a statically compiled .dll which includes OpenSSL and APR. It can be downloaded from here as 32bit or AMD x86-64 binaries. In security conscious production environments, it is recommended to use separate shared dlls for OpenSSL, APR, and libtcnative-1, and update them as needed according to security bulletins. Windows OpenSSL binaries are linked from the Official OpenSSL website (see related/binaries).

Linux

Most Linux distributions will ship packages for APR and OpenSSL. The JNI wrapper (libtcnative) will then have to be compiled. It depends on APR, OpenSSL, and the Java headers. Some ready to use bundles are available here.

Requirements:

APR 1.2+ development headers (libapr1-dev package)

OpenSSL 0.9.7+ development headers (libssl-dev package)

JNI headers from Java compatible JDK 1.4+

GNU development environment (gcc, make)

The wrapper library sources are located here. Once the build environment is installed and the source archive is extracted, the wrapper library can be compiled using (from the folder containing the configure script):
./configure && make && make install

APR Components

Once the libraries are properly installed and available to Java (if loading fails, the library path will be displayed), the JBoss Web connectors will automatically use APR. Configuration of the connectors is similar to the regular connectors, but have a few extra attributes which are used to configure APR components. Note that the defaults should be well tuned for most use cases, and additional tweaking shouldn't be required.

When APR is enabled, the following features are also enabled in JBoss Web:

Secure session ID generation by default on all platforms (platforms other than Linux required random number generation using a configured entropy)
OS level statistics on memory usage and CPU usage by the JBoss Web process are displayed by the status servlet

APR Lifecycle Listener Configuration

AprLifecycleListener

Name of the SSLEngine to use. off: Do not use SSL, on: Use SSL but no specific ENGINE. The default value is on. This initializes the native SSL engine, then enable the use of this engine in the connector using the SSLEnabled attribute. Example:
<Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener" SSLEngine="on" />

See the Official OpenSSL website for more details on SSL hardware engines and manufacturers.

APR Connectors Configuration

HTTP

When APR is enabled, the HTTP connector will use sendfile for hadling large static files (all such files will be sent ansychronously using high performance kernel level calls), and will use a socket poller for keepalive, increasing scalability of the server.

The following attributes are supported in the HTTP APR connector in addition to the ones supported in the regular HTTP connector:

Attribute Description
deferAccept
Use defer accept feature if available. The default value is true.

keepAliveTimeout
The number of milliseconds this Connector will wait for another HTTP request before closing the connection. The default value is to use the value that has been set for the connectionTimeout attribute. This value also controls the timeout interval which is used for Comet connections.

pollTime
Duration of a poll call. Lowering this value will slightly decrease latency of connections being kept alive in some cases, but will use more CPU as more poll calls are being made. The default value is 2000 (5ms).

pollerSize
Amount of sockets that the poller responsible for polling kept alive connections can hold at a given time. Extra connections will be closed right away. The default value is 8192, corresponding to 8192 keepalive connections.

useSendfile
Use kernel level sendfile for certain static files. The default value is true.

sendfileSize
Amount of sockets that the poller responsible for sending static files asynchronously can hold at a given time. Extra connections will be closed right away without any data being sent (resulting in a zero length file on the client side). Note that in most cases, sendfile is a call that will return right away (being taken care of "synchonously" by the kernel), and the sendfile poller will not be used, so the amount of static files which can be sent concurrently is much larger than the specified amount. The default value is 1024.

HTTPS

When APR is enabled, the HTTPS connector will use a socket poller for keepalive, increasing scalability of the server. It also uses OpenSSL, which may be more optimized than JSSE depending on the processor being used, and can be complemented with many commercial accelerator components. Unlike the HTTP connector, the HTTPS connector cannot use sendfile to optimize static file processing.

The HTTPS APR connector has the same basic attributes than the HTTP APR connector, but adds OpenSSL specific ones. For the full details on using OpenSSL, please refer to OpenSSL documentations and the many books available for it (see the Official OpenSSL website). The SSL specific attributes for the connector are:

Attribute Description
SSLEnabled
Enable SSL on the socket, default value is false. Set this value to true to enable SSL handshake/encryption/decryption in the APR connector.

SSLProtocol
Protocol which may be used for communicating with clients. The default is "all", with other acceptable values being "SSLv2", "SSLv3", "TLSv1", and "SSLv2+SSLv3".

SSLCipherSuite
Ciphers which may be used for communicating with clients. The default is "ALL", with other acceptable values being a list of ciphers, with ":" used as the delimiter (see OpenSSL documentation for the list of ciphers supported).

SSLCertificateFile
Name of the file that contains the server certificate. The format is PEM-encoded.

SSLCertificateKeyFile
Name of the file that contains the server private key. The format is PEM-encoded. The default value is the value of "SSLCertificateFile" and in this case both certificate and private key have to be in this file (NOT RECOMMENDED).

SSLPassword
Pass phrase for the encrypted private key. If "SSLPassword" is not provided, the callback fonction should prompt for the pass phrase.

SSLVerifyClient
Ask client for certificate. The default is "none", meaning the client will not have the opportunity to submit a certificate. Other acceptable values include "optional", "require" and "optionalNoCA".

SSLVerifyDepth
Maximum verification depth for client certificates. The default is "10".

SSLCACertificateFile
See the mod_ssl documentation.

SSLCACertificatePath
See the mod_ssl documentation.

SSLCertificateChainFile
See the mod_ssl documentation.

SSLCARevocationFile
See the mod_ssl documentation.

SSLCARevocationPath
See the mod_ssl documentation.

An example SSL Connector declaration can be:
    <Connector port="443" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" maxThreads="150"
               enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true"
               acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true"
               SSLEnabled="true" 
               SSLCertificateFile="${catalina.base}/conf/localhost.crt"
               SSLCertificateKeyFile="${catalina.base}/conf/localhost.key" />

AJP

When APR is enabled, the AJP connector will use a socket poller for keepalive, increasing scalability of the server. As AJP is designed around a pool of persistent (or almost persistent) connections, this will reduce significantly the amount of processing threads needed by JBoss Web. Unlike the HTTP connector, the AJP connector cannot use sendfile to optimize static file processing.

The following attributes are supported in the AJP APR connector in addition to the ones supported in the regular AJP connector:

Attribute Description
deferAccept
Use defer accept feature if available. The default value is true.

pollTime
Duration of a poll call. Lowering this value will slightly decrease latency of connections being kept alive in some cases, but will use more CPU as more poll calls are being made. The default value is 2000 (5ms).

pollerSize
Amount of sockets that the poller responsible for polling kept alive connections can hold at a given time. Extra connections will be closed right away. The default value is 8192, corresponding to 8192 keepalive connections.

Attribute	Description
`deferAccept`	Use defer accept feature if available. The default value is true.
`keepAliveTimeout`	The number of milliseconds this Connector will wait for another HTTP request before closing the connection. The default value is to use the value that has been set for the connectionTimeout attribute. This value also controls the timeout interval which is used for Comet connections.
`pollTime`	Duration of a poll call. Lowering this value will slightly decrease latency of connections being kept alive in some cases, but will use more CPU as more poll calls are being made. The default value is 2000 (5ms).
`pollerSize`	Amount of sockets that the poller responsible for polling kept alive connections can hold at a given time. Extra connections will be closed right away. The default value is 8192, corresponding to 8192 keepalive connections.
`useSendfile`	Use kernel level sendfile for certain static files. The default value is true.
`sendfileSize`	Amount of sockets that the poller responsible for sending static files asynchronously can hold at a given time. Extra connections will be closed right away without any data being sent (resulting in a zero length file on the client side). Note that in most cases, sendfile is a call that will return right away (being taken care of "synchonously" by the kernel), and the sendfile poller will not be used, so the amount of static files which can be sent concurrently is much larger than the specified amount. The default value is 1024.

Attribute	Description
`SSLEnabled`	Enable SSL on the socket, default value is false. Set this value to true to enable SSL handshake/encryption/decryption in the APR connector.
`SSLProtocol`	Protocol which may be used for communicating with clients. The default is "all", with other acceptable values being "SSLv2", "SSLv3", "TLSv1", and "SSLv2+SSLv3".
`SSLCipherSuite`	Ciphers which may be used for communicating with clients. The default is "ALL", with other acceptable values being a list of ciphers, with ":" used as the delimiter (see OpenSSL documentation for the list of ciphers supported).
`SSLCertificateFile`	Name of the file that contains the server certificate. The format is PEM-encoded.
`SSLCertificateKeyFile`	Name of the file that contains the server private key. The format is PEM-encoded. The default value is the value of "SSLCertificateFile" and in this case both certificate and private key have to be in this file (NOT RECOMMENDED).
`SSLPassword`	Pass phrase for the encrypted private key. If "SSLPassword" is not provided, the callback fonction should prompt for the pass phrase.
`SSLVerifyClient`	Ask client for certificate. The default is "none", meaning the client will not have the opportunity to submit a certificate. Other acceptable values include "optional", "require" and "optionalNoCA".
`SSLVerifyDepth`	Maximum verification depth for client certificates. The default is "10".
`SSLCACertificateFile`	See the mod_ssl documentation.
`SSLCACertificatePath`	See the mod_ssl documentation.
`SSLCertificateChainFile`	See the mod_ssl documentation.
`SSLCARevocationFile`	See the mod_ssl documentation.
`SSLCARevocationPath`	See the mod_ssl documentation.