How To Install WildFly on Debian 9 Stretch

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install WildFly on Debian 9 Stretch. For those of you who didn’t know, The WildFly implements the Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE). It is among the most common source Java server applications. It offers you an administration dashboard to manage single or multiple domains efficiently.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation WildFly on a Debian 9 (Stretch) server.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 9 (Stretch).
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install WildFly on Debian 9 Stretch

Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing Java.

WildFly requires Java to be installed. We’ll install OpenJDK, which is the default Java development and runtime in Debian 9:

sudo apt install default-jdk

Step 3. Create a WildFly User.

We will create a new system user and group named WildFly with a home directory /opt/wildfly that will run the WildFly service:

sudo groupadd -r wildfly
sudo useradd -r -g wildfly -d /opt/wildfly -s /sbin/nologin wildfly

Step 4. Installing WildFly on Debian.

First, Download the latest version of WildFly on the server and extract it using the following commands:

WILDFLY_VERSION=16.0.0.Final
wget https://download.jboss.org/wildfly/$WILDFLY_VERSION/wildfly-$WILDFLY_VERSION.tar.gz -P /tmp

Once the download is completed, extract the tar.gz file and move it to the /opt directory:

sudo tar xf /tmp/wildfly-$WILDFLY_VERSION.tar.gz -C /opt/

Next, create a symbolic link WildFly which will point to the WildFly installation directory:

sudo ln -s /opt/wildfly-$WILDFLY_VERSION /opt/wildfly
sudo chown -RH wildfly: /opt/wildfly

Step 5. Configure Systemd WildFly.

Start by creating a directory that will hold the WildFly configuration file:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/wildfly
sudo cp /opt/wildfly/docs/contrib/scripts/systemd/wildfly.conf /etc/wildfly/

By default, WildFly will run in a standalone mode and will listen on all interfaces. You can edit the file according to your needs:

nano /etc/wildfly/wildfly.conf

# The configuration you want to run
WILDFLY_CONFIG=standalone.xml

# The mode you want to run
WILDFLY_MODE=standalone

# The address to bind to
WILDFLY_BIND=0.0.0.0

Next copy the WildFly launch.sh script to the /opt/wildfly/bin/ directory:

sudo cp /opt/wildfly/docs/contrib/scripts/systemd/launch.sh /opt/wildfly/bin/
sudo sh -c 'chmod +x /opt/wildfly/bin/*.sh'
sudo cp /opt/wildfly/docs/contrib/scripts/systemd/wildfly.service /etc/systemd/system/

Then, start the WildFly service by executing:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start wildfly
sudo systemctl enable wildfly

Step 6. Configure the Firewall for WildFly.

To access the WildFly interface from the outside of your local network you need to open port 8080:

sudo ufw allow 8080/tcp

Step 7. Accessing WildFly Installation.

WildFly will be available on HTTP port 8080 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://your-domain.com:8080 or http://server-ip:8080 and complete the required steps to finish the installation.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed WildFly. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest version of the WildFly on the Debian 9 server. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official WildFly website.