Starting WebLogic managed servers without providing username and password manually – SOA Suite 11g tip


After installing the Oracle SOA suite 11g, you will notice that you have to enter username and password  for each managed server during startup and shutdown. This in contrary to the administration server where you don't need to enter username and password at startup. I was wondering if there was an easy way of skipping this manual step for the managed servers as well.
And yes, there is an easy and elegant way to prevent entering credentials every startup and shutdown. Just follow these steps:
1 Create a boot.properties file.
Create a plain text file called boot.properties with the following content:
username=scott
password=tiger

2 Place the boot.properties file in the security directory.
Save or copy this file in the security directory under the managed server root directory. This directory was not created at installation time, so I had to create it myself. The server root directory is located at <middleware_home>\user_projects\<domain>\<managed_server> i.e. D:\Middleware\user_projects\domains\base_domain\servers\bam_server1.

3 Start the managed server.
The server will read the credentials from the boot.properties file and in case of plain text username and password the server encrypt the username and password. Notice the following lines in the output:
<Sep 23, 2009 10:51:25 PM CEST> <Notice> <Security> <BEA-090082> <Security initializing using security realm myrealm.>
<Sep 23, 2009 10:51:25 PM CEST> <Notice> <Security> <BEA-090083> <Storing boot identity in the file: D:\Middleware\user_projects\domains\base_domain\servers\bam_server1\security\boot.properties>

The boot.properties file is still plain text with the username and password values encrypted. Do no copy the encrypted version between managed servers. Even when the credentials are the same, the resulting file is different.