I am having some problems setting up Tomcat for JMX. I added the following properties to

  CATALINA_OPTS="-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=18070      -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.password.file=$CATALINA_BASE/conf/jmxremote.password      -Dcom.sun
    .management.jmxremote.ssl=false"

And have added the jmxremote.password file in to the conf directory. I wrote a client tool that connects to the JMX server running on port 18070. When i run the client program i get the following error.

    Exception in thread "main" java.lang.SecurityException: Authentication failed! Credentials required
       at com.sun.jmx.remote.security.JMXPluggableAuthenticator.authenticationFailure(JMXPluggableAuthenticator.java:193)
       at com.sun.jmx.remote.security.JMXPluggableAuthenticator.authenticate(JMXPluggableAuthenticator.java:145)
       at sun.management.jmxremote.ConnectorBootstrap$AccessFileCheckerAuthenticator.authenticate(ConnectorBootstrap.java:185)
       at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIServerImpl.doNewClient(RMIServerImpl.java:213)
       at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIServerImpl.newClient(RMIServerImpl.java:180)
       at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
       at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
       at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
       at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
       at sun.rmi.server.UnicastServerRef.dispatch(UnicastServerRef.java:305)
       at sun.rmi.transport.Transport$1.run(Transport.java:159)
       at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
       at sun.rmi.transport.Transport.serviceCall(Transport.java:155)
       at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport.handleMessages(TCPTransport.java:535)
       at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler.run0(TCPTransport.java:790)
       at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler.run(TCPTransport.java:649)
       at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:885)
       at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:907)
       at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)
       at sun.rmi.transport.StreamRemoteCall.exceptionReceivedFromServer(StreamRemoteCall.java:255)
       at sun.rmi.transport.StreamRemoteCall.executeCall(StreamRemoteCall.java:233)
       at sun.rmi.server.UnicastRef.invoke(UnicastRef.java:142)
       at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIServerImpl_Stub.newClient(Unknown Source)
       at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnector.getConnection(RMIConnector.java:2312)
       at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnector.connect(RMIConnector.java:277)
       at javax.management.remote.JMXConnectorFactory.connect(JMXConnectorFactory.java:248)
       at com.bt.c21sc.c21tkprobe.accessors.C21TkProbeJmxDAO.connect(Unknown Source)
       at com.bt.c21sc.c21tkprobe.service.C21TkProbeBD.execute(Unknown Source)
       at com.bt.c21sc.c21tkprobe.C21AppserverProbe.main(Unknown Source)

If i change the CATALINA_OPTS properties to

CATALINA_OPTS="-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=18070 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.password.file=$CATALINA_BASE/conf/jmxremote.password -Dcom.sun
.management.jmxremote.ssl=false -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false"

Then it works fine. I think what i am confused of is what is classed as remote access. I am running the client program away from the Tomcat instance but both Tomcat and the client tool are on the same machine (i.e. different virtual machines but same environemnt). I thought i had to configure the remote authentication if i access the JMX server remotely from a different machine.

By remote access do they mean accessing the JMX server from any VM either locally or remotely?