Apache Axis: Remote administrator access is not allowed!

or "How I learned to start worrying, and hate RPC"

Count me in as a frustrated developer that uses Apache Axis for Web Services. Let me tell you about a problem that I encountered and finally solved. Watch out, this is not pretty!

The problem first occurs when you use axis-admin to deploy a wsdd (Web Services Deployment Descriptor) to your remote Admin Service. This, by the way, occurs for Axis version 1.2 or the newer 1.2.1 version. When you run axis-admin client, you get the following:ns1:Server.UnauthorizedRemote administrator access is not allowed!

Another symptom that “the problem” might generate is a 401 error response. Also, in your web server log, you may encounter something like - Rejected remote access from host /x.x.x.x (your IP address).

I’d like to post the solution that I came up with so that many of you do not have to suffer as much as I did. ;) It is possible that another solution may exist somewhere else out there. If you have a link to it, I would surely appreciate your comment.

Onward...

First, make sure that in the WEB-INF directory, there exists a file called server-config.wsdd.

NOTE: If you have used a previous version of Axis, your assumption might be that this file is not needed and that one will be created for you. This was true for previous versions. However, I did not find this to be true in the most current version, at least not in Tomcat 5.5.

If you do not have the server-config.wsdd file, open your axis.jar file and look in org/apache/axis/server. You will find a server-config.wsdd file. Copy this file into the WEB-INF directory of your web server. Then, get ready to edit it. The original server-config.wsdd file should contain the following:  http://xml./axis/wsdd/       

In the fourth line down of this excerpt, change enableRemoteAdmin change to “true”. Your axis-admin will now work. I have a few other things to hash through with this new Axis, and I will post the solutions as I find them...