There are probably many ways of turning debug on in JBoss.
In windows the way I do it is by uncommenting the line in<JBoss>/bin/run.bat that starts with:
rem set JAVA_OPTS=-Xdebug
Uncommenting in DOS bat files is simply done by removing the rem command:
set JAVA_OPTS=-Xdebug
I created aliases for turning debug on and off. I use a script which simply replaces one string with another.
alias debugon='changeString.sh "^rem set JAVA_OPTS=-Xdebug" "set JAVA_OPTS=-Xdebug" ${JBOSS}/bin/run.bat && chmod 755 ${JBOSS}/bin/run.bat && unix2dos ${JBOSS}/bin/run.bat'
alias debugoff='changeString.sh "^set JAVA_OPTS=-Xdebug" "rem set JAVA_OPTS=-Xdebug" ${JBOSS}/bin/run.bat && chmod 755 ${JBOSS}/bin/run.bat && unix2dos ${JBOSS}/bin/run.bat'
On Unix I do a similar thing, uncommenting this line in <JBoss>/bin/run.conf:
#JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8787,server=y,suspend=n"
Uncommenting in Unix shell scripts is simply done by removing the # character at the beginning of the line.
JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8787,server=y,suspend=n"
These are my aliases on UNIX for turning debug on and off.
alias debugon="changeString.sh '^#JAVA_OPTS=\"\$JAVA_OPTS -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket' 'JAVA_OPTS=\"\$JAVA_OPTS -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket' ${JBOSS_HOME}/bin/run.conf"
alias debugoff="changeString.sh '^JAVA_OPTS=\"\$JAVA_OPTS -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket' '#JAVA_OPTS=\"\$JAVA_OPTS -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket' ${JBOSS_HOME}/bin/run.conf"
One of the reasons I created the scripts was because on Windows suspend=y by default. Therefore when in debug mode you have to start your debugger or the JBoss server will not completely start up. On Unix suspend=n by default. If you change suspend=n on Windows too then the server will start up without waiting for the debugger to attach.
Note that you can only have one server with debug on for a given port, e.g. port 8787. So if you try to start more than one JBoss server with that port, only the first will start. The solution is to start only one server with debug on or start different servers with different debug ports.