Change the username and password of Apache Karaf admin user

What you will do:

• Change the username and password for Apache Karaf admin user

What you will learn:

• Overwrite default Karaf configuration files
• Use Maven filtered resources
  

Please see the post "Create a custom Apache Karaf server" for the initial setup.

By default, the admin user has the username/password of karaf/karaf.  For branding purposes, we want to rename the username/password of dekantar/dekantar .

Step 1: Define username/password

Define the username/password as Maven properties in the pom.xml

<properties>
    <dekantar.username>dekantar</dekantar.username>
    <dekantar.password>dekantar</dekantar.password>
</properties>

Step 2: Turn on Maven filtered resources

Filtered resource will substitute Maven variables in text files with the property values

<resources>
<resource>
    <directory>src/main/resources</directory>
    <filtering>false</filtering>
    <includes>
    <include>**/*</include>
    </includes>
</resource>
<resource>
    <directory>src/main/filtered-resources</directory>
    <filtering>true</filtering>
    <includes>
    <include>**/*</include>
    </includes>
</resource>
</resources>

The filtering is true property turns on variable substitution in the src/main/filtered-resources directory.

See https://github.com/juttayaya/karaf/blob/master/karaf3/custom-karaf/custom-karaf-server/pom.xml for full example.

Step 3: Overwrite default Karaf security file

The default Karaf security file is etc/user.properties. To overwrite, create the file src/main/filtered-resources/etc/user.properties.

The content of etc/user.properties is

${dekantar.username} = ${dekantar.password},_g_:admingroup

_g_\:admingroup = group,admin,manager,viewer,webconsole

The variable substitution results in the output

dekantar = dekantar,_g_:admingroup

_g_\:admingroup = group,admin,manager,viewer,webconsole

Don't worry about the clear text password. Karaf will automatically encrypt it on first login.

See https://github.com/juttayaya/karaf/blob/master/karaf3/custom-karaf/custom-karaf-server/src/main/filtered-resources/etc/users.properties for full example

Step 4: Test it

After building the Karaf server, start it via command

cd $KARAF_DIR/bin

./start

Then log in with the new username

ssh dekantar@localhost -p8101