Getting Started with IceGrid Admin

This page describes how to launch the IceGrid Admin tool.

On this page:

System Requirements

IceGrid Admin is a JavaTM application supported on a wide range of platforms, including Windows, Linux and OS X.

The minimum requirements for running IceGrid Admin are listed below:

  • icegridgui.jar, usually installed in the bin or lib directory of your Ice installation
  • Java SE Runtime Environment 7 or later

In order to use IceGrid Admin's metrics graphs feature, you will need the JavaFX Runtime Environment, bundled with recent updates of the Oracle Java SE Runtime Environment 7 on Windows, Linux and OS X.

You can download Oracle Java SE for most platforms from Oracle.

If you want to read IceGrid XML files from IceGrid Admin, you also need to have the icegridadmin command-line utility (version 3.6) in your PATH.

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Starting IceGrid Admin

On Windows IceGrid Admin can be started by clicking the IceGrid Admin icon in the Start menu:

 

On OS X IceGrid Admin can be started by clicking the IceGrid Admin icon in Finder Applications folder:

On Linux with a RPM installation, you can use the icegridgui script installed in /usr/bin:

$ icegridgui

On all platforms, you can also start IceGrid Admin from a terminal by typing:

java -jar path-to-icegridgui.jar


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Command Line Arguments

IceGrid Admin can be configured using Ice properties, and like with most Ice applications, these properties can be set using command-line arguments or a configuration file (or both).

Since IceGrid Admin is an Ice application (a client to the IceGrid registry), setting regular Ice properties can be useful as well. For example, you can set the Ice.Trace.Network property to get detailed information about network communications sent to stderr.

$ icegridgui --Ice.Trace.Network=2

There are also a number of properties specific to IceGrid Admin itself, describe in IceGridAdmin.*.

If you need to set many properties, it is a good idea to write a configuration file and use the --Ice.Config command-line argument to specify the location of this file. For example:

> java -jar "C:\Program Files (x86)\ZeroC\Ice-3.6b\bin\icegridgui.jar" --Ice.Config=icegridadmin.conf

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Main IceGrid Admin Window

The main IceGrid Admin window allows to navigate between your live deployment and the definitions of several applications.

Tabs

 The main IceGrid Admin window shows one or more tabs:

  • The Live Deployment tab () displays information about an IceGrid deployment you have logged into. There is always one and only one Live Deployment tab. When you are not connected to an IceGrid deployment, the corresponding pane is empty.
  • A Live Application tab () displays application definitions retrieved from the IceGrid registry you are connected to. As long as you do not change anything in the associated pane, IceGrid Admin will keep the information up-to-date. For example if another administrator adds a new server definition in this application definition, it will appear automatically and immediately in this pane.

  • A File-Based Application tab () displays application definitions retrieved from an IceGrid XML file.

  • An icon-less tab displays the definitions of an application that is not bound to an IceGrid registry or to a file, such as a brand new application. A live application with unsaved modifications also becomes icon-less if the connection to its IceGrid registry is lost.

IceGrid Admin may show any number of application tabs, including none at all.

Status Bar

 The status bar at the bottom of the main window shows information about operations performed by IceGrid Admin, or messages received from the IceGrid registry.

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See Also