From Linux Man Pages
rmid - RMI activation system daemon
rmid [ options ]
DESCRIPTION
The rmid tool starts the activation system daemon. Before activatable objects can be either registered with the
activation system or activated in a Java VM, the activation system daemon must be started. See the RMI Specifi-
cation and Activation Tutorials for details on how to write programs that use activatable remote objects.
The daemon can be started by executing the rmid command, and specifying a security policy file, as follows:
example% rmid -J-Djava.security.policy=rmid.policy
Note: When running Sun's implementation of rmid, by default you will need to specify a security policy file so
that rmid can verify whether or not the information in each ActivationGroupDesc is allowed to be used to launch a
JVM for an activation group. Specifically, the command and options specified by the CommandEnvironment and any
Properties passed to an ActivationGroupDesc's constructor must now be explicitly allowed in the security policy
file for rmid. The value of the sun.rmi.activation.execPolicy property dictates the policy that rmid uses to
determine whether or not the information in an ActivationGroupDesc may be used to launch a JVM for an activation
group.
Executing rmid by default
� starts the Activator and an internal registry on the default port, 1098, and
� binds an ActivationSystem to the name java.rmi.activation.ActivationSystem in this internal registry.
To specify an alternate port for the registry, you must specify the -port option when starting up rmid. For
example,
rmid -J-Djava.security.policy=rmid.policy -port 1099
starts the activation system daemon and a registry on the registry's default port, 1099.
Starting rmid from inetd/xinetd
An alternative to starting rmid from the command line is to configure inetd (Solaris) or xinetd (Linux) to start
rmid on demand.
When rmid starts up, it attempts to obtain an inherited channel (inherited from inetd/xinetd) by invoking the
System.inheritedChannel method. If the inherited channel is null, then rmid was started from the command line,
and it starts up as described above.
If the inherited channel is not an instance of java.io.channels.ServerSocketChannel, rmid exits.
If the inherited channel is a ServerSocketChannel instance, then rmid uses the java.net.ServerSocket obtained
from the ServerSocketChannel as the server socket that accepts requests for the remote objects it exports, namely
the registry in which the java.rmi.activation.ActivationSystem is bound and the java.rmi.activation.Activator
remote object.
The rmid tool, when started from inetd/xinetd, behaves the same as when it is started from the command line,
except:
� Output printed to System.err is redirected
to a file. This file is located in the directory specified by the java.io.tmpdir system property (typically
/var/tmp or /tmp) with the prefix "rmid-err" and the suffix "tmp".
� The -port option is disallowed. If this
option is specified, rmid will exit with an error message.
� The -log option is required. If this option
is not specified, rmid will exit with an error message.
See the man pages for inetd (Solaris) or xinetd (Linux) for details on how to configure services to be started on
demand.
OPTIONS
-CsomeCommandLineOption
Specifies an option that is passed as a command-line argument to each child process (activation group) of
rmid when that process is created. For example, you could pass a property to each Java virtual machine
spawned by the activation system daemon:
rmid -C-Dsome.property=value
This ability to pass command-line arguments o child processes can be useful for debugging. For example,
the following command:
rmid -C-Djava.rmi.server.logCalls=true
will enable server-call logging in all child JVMs.
-JsomeCommandLineOption
Specifies an option that is passed to the java interpreter running rmid. For example, to specify that
rmid use a policy file named rmid.policy, the -J option can be used to define the java.security.policy
property on rmid's command line. For example:
rmid -J-Djava.security.policy=rmid.policy
-J-Dsun.rmi.activation.execPolicy=policy
Specifies the policy that rmid employs to check commands and command-line options used to launch the JVM
in which an activation group runs. Please note that this option exists only in Sun's implementation of
the RMI activation daemon. If this property is not specified on the command line, the result is the same
as if -J-Dsun.rmi.activation.execPolicy=default were specified. The possible values of policy can be
default, policyClassName, or none:
� default (or if this property is unspecified) The default execPolicy allows rmid to execute commands with
specific command-line options only if rmid has been granted permission to execute those commands and
options in the security policy file that rmid uses. Only the default activation group implementation
can be used with the default execution policy.
rmid launches a JVM for an activation group using the information in the group's registered activation
group descriptor, an ActivationGroupDesc. The group descriptor specifies an optional Activation-
GroupDesc.CommandEnvironment which includes the command to execute to start the activation group as well
as any command line options to be added to the command line. By default, rmid uses the java command
found in java.home. The group descriptor also contains properties overrides that are added to the com-
mand line as options defined as:
-Dproperty=value
The permission com.sun.rmi.rmid.ExecPermission is used to grant rmid permission to execute a command,
specified in the group descriptor's CommandEnvironment to launch an activation group. The permission
com.sun.rmi.rmid.ExecOptionPermission is used to allow rmid to use command-line options, specified as
properties overrides in the group descriptor or as options in the CommandEnvironment, when launching the
activation group.
When granting rmid permission to execute various commands and options, the permissions ExecPermission
and ExecOptionPermission need to be granted universally (that is, granted to all code sources).
ExecPermission
The ExecPermission class represents permission for rmid to execute a specific command to launch
an activation group.
Syntax
The name of an ExecPermission is the path name of a command to grant rmid permission to execute.
A path name that ends in "/*" indicates all the files contained in that directory (where "/" is
the file-separator character, File.separatorChar). A path name that ends with "/-" indicates all
files and subdirectories contained in that directory (recursively). A path name consisting of
the special token "<<ALL FILES>>" matches any file.
Note: A path name consisting of a single "*" indicates all the files in the current directory,
while a path name consisting of a single "-" indicates all the files in the current directory and
(recursively) all files and subdirectories contained in the current directory.
ExecOptionPermission
The ExecOptionPermission class represents permission for rmid to use a specific command-line
option when launching an activation group. The name of an ExecOptionPermission is the value of a
command line option.
Syntax
Options support a limited wildcard scheme. An asterisk signifies a wildcard match, and it may
appear as the option name itself (that is, it matches any option), or an asterisk may appear at
the end of the option name only if the asterisk follows either a "." or "=".
For example: "*" or "-Dfoo.*" or "-Da.b.c=*" is valid; "*foo" or "-Da*b" or "ab*" is not.
Policy file for rmid
When granting rmid permission to execute various commands and options, the permissions ExecPermission
and ExecOptionPermission need to be granted universally (that is, granted to all code sources). It is
safe to grant these permissions universally because only rmid checks these permissions.
An example policy file that grants various execute permissions to rmid is:
grant {
permission com.sun.rmi.rmid.ExecPermission
"/files/apps/java/jdk1.2.2/bin/java";
permission com.sun.rmi.rmid.ExecPermission
"/files/apps/rmidcmds/*";
permission com.sun.rmi.rmid.ExecOptionPermission
"-Djava.security.policy=/files/policies/group.policy";
permission com.sun.rmi.rmid.ExecOptionPermission
"-Djava.security.debug=*";
permission com.sun.rmi.rmid.ExecOptionPermission
"-Dsun.rmi.*";
};
The first permission granted allow rmid to execute the 1.2.2 version of the java command, specified by
its explicit path names. Note that by default, the version of the java command found in java.home is
used (the same one that rmid uses), and does not need to be specified in the policy file. The third
permission allows rmid to execute any command in the directory /files/apps/rmidcmds.
The fourth permission granted, an ExecOptionPermission, allows rmid to launch an activation group that
defines the security policy file to be /files/policies/group.policy. The next permission allows the
java.security.debug property to be used by an activation group. The last permission allows any property
in the sun.rmi property name hierarchy to be used by activation groups.
To start rmid with a policy file, the java.security.policy property needs to be specified on rmid's com-
mand line. For example:
rmid -J-Djava.security.policy=rmid.policy
� policyClassName
If the default behavior is not flexible enough, an administrator can provide, when starting rmid, the
name of a class whose checkExecCommand method is executed in order to check commands to be executed by
rmid.
The policyClassName specifies a public class with a public, no-argument constructor and an implementa-
tion of the following checkExecCommand method:
public void checkExecCommand(ActivationGroupDesc desc,
String[] command)
throws SecurityException;
Before launching an activation group, rmid calls the policy's checkExecCommand method, passing it the
activation group descriptor and an array containing the complete command to launch the activation group.
If the checkExecCommand throws a SecurityException, rmid will not launch the activation group and an
ActivationException will be thrown to the caller attempting to activate the object.
� none
If the sun.rmi.activation.execPolicy property value is "none", then rmid will not perform any validation
of commands to launch activation groups.
-log dir
Specifies the name of the directory the activation system daemon uses to write its database and associated
information. The log directory defaults to creating a directory, log, in the directory in which the rmid
command was executed.
-port port
Specifies the port rmid's registry uses. The activation system daemon binds the ActivationSystem, with
the name java.rmi.activation.ActivationSystem, in this registry. Thus, the ActivationSystem on the local
machine can be obtained using the following Naming.lookup method call:
import java.rmi.*;
import java.rmi.activation.*;
ActivationSystem system;
system = (ActivationSystem)
Naming.lookup("//:port/java.rmi.activation.ActivationSystem");
-stop Stops the current invocation of rmid, for a port specified by the -port option. If no port is specified,
it will stop the rmid running on port 1098.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
CLASSPATH Used to provide the system a path to user-defined classes. Directories are separated by
colons. For example,
example% .:/usr/local/java/classes
RELATED
rmic(1)
See (or search java.sun.com) for the following:
RMI Specification @
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5/docs/guide/rmi/spec/rmiTOC.doc.html
CATEGORY