Suppose I have a box whose hostname is not resolvable via DNS (I know, I know, but for people demo'ing software on a laptop, we've seen it happen). So, I cannot "ping `hostname`" but I can "ping 127.0.0.1".

Look at NetworkRegistry:

public ObjectName preRegister(MBeanServer mBeanServer, ObjectName objectName) throws Exception
 {
 this.mBeanServer = mBeanServer;
 this.objectName = objectName;
 // make sure our identity system property is properly set
 Identity identity = Identity.get(this.mBeanServer);
...

Now look at the Identity.get() method it called there:

 if(identities.containsKey(server))
 {
 return (Identity) identities.get(server);
 }
 try
 {
 String serverid = (String) server.getAttribute(new ObjectName("JMImplementation:type=MBeanServerDelegate"), "MBeanServerId");
 Identity identity = new Identity(InetAddress.getLocalHost(), createId(server), serverid);
 identities.put(server, identity);
 return identity;
 }

It calls InetAddress.getLocalHost() but if that fails (and it will if the local hostname is not resolvable) you can *never* start a NetworkRegistry object.

If there is an exception here in that call to InetAddress.getLocalHost(), it should fallback and use: InetAddress getByName("127.0.0.1").

I tried setting "jboss.identity" sysprop to Identity.createUniqueID() but unfortunately, that sysprop isn't used in this class and NetworkRegistry never looks to see if that is set as a fallback.

I understand that without a resolvable host, it hobbles things - but for demo purposes of software that will ONLY ever run on a single laptop over the loopback network adapter on 127.0.0.1, this should still work without me having to disable things like the NetworkRegistry.