[Wrapper-user] Java Service Wrapper 3.5.8

[Leif M. <lei...@ta...>]

Hi all,
I would like to announce the release of 3.5.8 of the Java Service
Wrapper.  This version is primarily a bug fix release, but also includes
some new features:

*) A new option to use a dedicated thread to process all output from the JVM.

*) A new option to use pipe rather than a socket for backend
communication between the Wrapper and JVM.

*) It is now possible to use the Wrapper and its configuration as a
simple launcher for a standalone JVM without any monitoring.

*) The Wrapper will now automatically configure an account specified
to run the Wrapper as a service if it did not already have permission
to do so.

There were also some important fixes:

*) Starting with 3.5.7, we started signing our Windows binaries.
This was a much requested improvement which will help with security.
Overall it worked great, but we had some checks in our own code to log
messages if there were any problems with the signature.  On properly
configured systems everything was working great.   But we were being
overly strict and shutting down if there were any problems.
Some Windows 2008 users had configured their systems in such a way
that the Comodo root certificate that we use was not being authorized.
 Even though the OS was allowing the Wrapper to be launched, we were
shutting ourselves down.
The Wrapper will now only shut itself down if we detect that the
Wrapper binary is actually corrupted.   In other cases, we assume that
if the OS allowed us to be launched then it is OK to run.
This issue could cause problems for applications which distributed
their applications with 3.5.7 if they are run on such systems.

*) Improved the way the Java side of the Wrapper detects when the
Wrapper has failed. The Wrapper had always contained code which would
shut the JVM down automatically whenever it lost contact with the
Wrapper process for more than the ping timeout.  This was there to
prevent the JVM from becoming a zombie process in the event that the
Wrapper process were to crash.   On Windows it is not possible to kill
processes running in the service environment and would require a
system restart to recover.
The problem was that on very heavily IO loaded systems, the Wrapper
could sometimes get stuck blocking to write log output to disk.  If
this happened for long enough then the JVM would time out and exit.
The Wrapper would recover by restarting the JVM, but still this was
not desirable.
Starting with 3.5.8, The Java side of the Wrapper will now never shut
itself down in cases like this.   It uses a different mechanism which
actually confirms that the Wrapper process is gone before shutting
down so it will still never become a zombie.

Please see the release notes for a full list of changes:
http://wrapper.tanukisoftware.org/doc/english/release-notes.html#3.5.8

The full release is available on the Wrapper site:
http://wrapper.tanukisoftware.com/doc/english/download.jsp

As always, please let us know how we can continue to improve the
Wrapper to meet your needs.

Sincerely,
Leif Mortenson
Tanuki Software, Ltd.
http://www.tanukisoftware.com