Running Unblu in standalone mode

There are a number of scenarios—testing, development, or demos, for example—where it may be useful to deploy an Unblu server to your local machine. In such cases, you can deploy Unblu in standalone mode.

Standalone mode isn’t suitable for production use.

Requirements

Any reasonably modern machine should be capable of running Unblu in standalone mode. For example, a machine with the following specifications will do the job:

1 recent CPU core running at 2.4GHz
4 GB RAM
10 GB hard drive space

You will also need:

Java 21 installed on the computer where you want to run Unblu
The Unblu installation package, consisting of the following elements:
- The Unblu WAR file
- A valid Unblu license key
An Unblu properties file (optional)

Deployment

As an Unblu customer, you’re typically granted access to a downloadable file with a name like product.com.unblu-<version>-<guid>.war. The Unblu WAR file can also be used as an executable JAR. In standalone mode, it runs using an embedded Jetty-based web server.

Listing 1. Starting Unblu with default configuration

java -jar product.com.unblu-<version>-<guid>.war

The embedded Jetty web server automatically selects a TCP port in the range of 6060—7070. To specify the TCP port yourself, add -Dport= on the command line:

Listing 2. Starting Unblu with a specific TCP port

java -Dport=6789 \
     -jar product.com.unblu-<version>-<guid>.war

Command line options

The following command line options are available when you run the executable JAR file:

Listing 3. Options and description

-e,--export <arg>   Type of export. Possible options: 'ear' or 'wjar'
-h,--help	          Display this help message
-l,--list           Format of output: ( version: build: branch: )
-m,--migrationOnly  use to shutdown the product after database migration is complete
-o,--output <arg>   File to write the exported product to. If not given, output will default to STDOUT.
-p,--product <arg>  ID of the product to start, for example product.com.unblu.enterprise (default) (1)
-t,--test           Include test bundles into the product execution/export (not available in production versions).
-d,--diag           Include diagnostics bundles in the product execution/export (not available in production versions).

1	The `--product` switch is also available via System Properties.

These options are placed after -jar product.com.unblu-<version>-<guid>.war:

Listing 4. Placement of command line options when launching Unblu in standalone mode

java
     -jar product.com.unblu-<version>-<guid>.war \
     --help

Configuration

All configuration can be placed in a separate properties file.

Listing 5. Example properties file

com.unblu.runtime.jetty.port=7777

# Create a superadmin on DB setup
com.unblu.storage.createSuperAdmin=true
com.unblu.storage.superAdminUsername=
com.unblu.storage.superAdminPassword=superadmin

If you don’t specify the property com.unblu.storage.superAdminUsername, Unblu generates a random superadmin username.

To use your properties file, include its name in the command line argument -Dcom.unblu.propertyoverlay:

Listing 6. Start Unblu using the properties file unblu-config.properties

java -Dcom.unblu.propertyoverlay=unblu-config.properties \
    -Dport=7070 \
    -jar product.com.unblu-<version>-<guid>.war

If you need to use the Unblu JavaScript demo page, you can activate it by setting com.unblu.server.resources.enableDemoResources to true. If you also want the Unblu docs available locally, set com.unblu.server.resources.enableDocResources to true.