Slides for TRLabs SOA workshop

The TRLabs just organized a successful workshop on SOA. I gave a short presentation about REST there. Here is the slides.

Jetty 6 authentication by configuration XML without web.xml

I spent about a week for porting of NetKernel 3.3 from Jetty 5 to Jetty 6. It is done and I am testing the non-blocking IO (NIO) of Jetty 6 together with asynchronous processing feature of NetKernel. I also figure out how to configure Jetty 6 security in the configuration XML file. From the Jetty document about Realm, the security of an application can be configured in web.xml. However, there is no web.xml in my case, when the request received by Jetty be handled by a specific handler, which will call another handler-like facility for processing. The solution for Jetty 5 does not work for Jetty 6 for this case, since the corresponding API's of org.mortbay.jetty.Server are removed. I got some hint from the document about how to configure security for embedded Jetty. However, it is still about a web application via class WebAppContext. Then I wondered if org.mortbay.jetty.security.SecurityHandler will help (it has an interesting name). Yes, it is. The hack is done with a longer XML file creating a HashUserRealm and a ConstraintMappings. See the details in the following snippet.

<Set name="handler">
<New id="Handlers"
class="org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerCollection">
<Set name="handlers">
<Array type="org.mortbay.jetty.Handler">
<Item>
<New id="BackendSecurity"
class="org.mortbay.jetty.security.SecurityHandler" />
</Item>
<Item>
<New id="BackendNetkernel"
class="org.ten60.transport.jetty.HttpHandler" />
</Item>
</Array>
</Set>
</New>
</Set>
<!-- =========================================================== -->
<!-- Configure BackendSecurity                                   -->
<!-- Add a Realm and a ConstraintMappings to it. See             -->
<!-- http://docs.codehaus.org/display/JETTY/How+to+Configure+Security+with+Embedded+Jetty -->
<!-- =========================================================== -->
<Ref id="BackendSecurity">
<Set name="UserRealm">
<New class="org.mortbay.jetty.security.HashUserRealm">
<Set name="name">Test Realm</Set>
<Set name="config">
<SystemProperty name="bootloader.basepath"
default=".." />/etc/realm.properties</Set>
</New>
</Set>
<Set name="AuthMethod">DIGEST</Set>
<Set name="ConstraintMappings">
<Array type="org.mortbay.jetty.security.ConstraintMapping">
<Item>
<New id="BSConstraintMapping"
class="org.mortbay.jetty.security.ConstraintMapping">
<Set name="Constraint">
<New class="org.mortbay.jetty.security.Constraint">
<Set name="Name">allSite</Set>
<Set name="Roles">
<Array type="java.lang.String">
<Item>admin</Item>
</Array>
</Set>
<Set name="Authenticate">true</Set>
</New>
</Set>
<Set name="PathSpec">/</Set>
</New>
</Item>
</Array>
</Set>
</Ref>

NetKernel backend securing by using Jetty realm

NetKernel uses Jetty for HTTP transport. By default, it opens two port, one for services, and one for management. The fresh installation does not secure the management port, the backend. However, you can configure it to do that by using HTAccessHandler of Jetty as described in http://www.1060.org/forum/topic/265/2 . I encountered problems when doing like that on Window system. So I tried to using Realm of Jetty to do that, and it works. Here is the configuration file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<httpConfig>
<!--
*****************
Jetty HTTP Server
*****************
-->
<Configure class="org.mortbay.jetty.Server">
<!--
***********
Add Listeners
***********
-->
<!--Start addlisteners-->
<!--Add SocketListener with default port 1060-->
<Call name="addListener">
<Arg>
<New class="org.mortbay.http.SocketListener">
<Set name="Port">1060</Set>
<Set name="MinThreads">5</Set>
<Set name="MaxThreads">50</Set>
<Set name="MaxIdleTimeMs">30000</Set>
<Set name="LowResourcePersistTimeMs">5000</Set>
</New>
</Arg>
</Call>
<!--End addlisteners-->
<Call name="addRealm">
<Arg>
<New class="org.mortbay.http.HashUserRealm">
<Arg>Admin Realm</Arg>
<Put name="admin">yourpasshere</Put>
<Call name="addUserToRole">
<Arg>admin</Arg>
<Arg>server-administrator</Arg>
</Call>
</New>
</Arg>
</Call>
<!--
************
Add Server Contexts
************
-->
<!--Default context at root / -->
<Call name="addContext">
<Arg>/</Arg>
<Set name="realmName">Admin Realm</Set>
<Set name="authenticator">
<New class="org.mortbay.http.BasicAuthenticator" />
</Set>
<Call name="addHandler">
<Arg>
<New class="org.mortbay.http.handler.SecurityHandler" />
</Arg>
</Call>
<Call name="addSecurityConstraint">
<Arg>/</Arg>
<Arg>
<New class="org.mortbay.http.SecurityConstraint">
<Arg>Admin</Arg>
<Arg>server-administrator</Arg>
</New>
</Arg>
</Call>
<Call name="addHandler">
<Arg>
<New class="org.ten60.transport.jetty.HttpHandler">
<Set name="Name">BackendHTTPTransport</Set>
</New>
</Arg>
</Call>
</Call>
</Configure>
</httpConfig>

Jetty also provides HashUserRealm that reads a property file in which the user names and passwords can be specified.

The Web is Agreement

Wonderful work by Paul Downey.
Tower of WS-Babel, exactly.

The Day The Routers Died...

Via Stefan Tilkov via James Snell, The Day The Routers Died...,

"a song performed by the secret-wg in the closing plenary of the RIPE 55 conference"

Google Reader supports search now

This morning I found search interface appeared on Google Reader page finally. It is time to retire the Google custom search engine made for blogs.

Solution of window resizing and moving for MS Windows with multiple monitors

I have tried several free tools on Windows system for window resizing and moving in and around multiple monitors. They were not that good, and even did not work when I have two monitors with different resolution and also layout (one portrait and one landscape). However, WindowPad surprised me by how easy this can be done using AutoHotKey. The original version of WindowPad is available at http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic21703.html. I made some small changes to

1. Set the NumLock of keyboard to be always on when the script runs;
   


2. Restore a maximized window before moving it to the next monitor, and then maximize it again.
   

The first change fixes the problem that the NumLock is set off when I remote connect to the box from the laptop at home. The second change makes the script work for moving a maximized window from a high resolution monitor to a low resolution one. The original script has been updated to fix the problem mentioned here and other bugs. Please check the latest version.