Here's what you can also do to determine the version (the passed in home parameter points to the JBoss installation director): protected String getServerVersion(String home) throws Exception { File file = new File(new File(home, "bin"), "run.jar"); Attributes attributes = new JarFile(file).getManifest().getMainAttributes(); return attributes.getValue(Attributes.Name.IMPLEMENTATION_VERSION).split(" ")[0]; }