I appears that remote-destination-outbound-socket-binding resources cannot have attributes that are expressions - at least the host attrtibute. In JBossAS 4.2.3, we used to have a stock email service.xml that people could customize by simply passing in new system properties (rather than editing .xml or going through a CLI to change the values). However, in AS 7.1.1.Final, we can't do this for the mail service because at least the host attribute does not appear to allow for expressions:

/socket-binding-group=standard-sockets/remote-destination-outbound-socket-binding=mail-smtp

My host attribute was set to the expression ${rhq.server.email.smtp-host:localhost} and when I tried to start the server, I got:

Caused by: java.net.UnknownHostException: ${rhq.server.email.smtp-host:localhost}
at java.net.Inet4AddressImpl.lookupAllHostAddr(Native Method) [rt.jar:1.6.0_29]
at java.net.InetAddress$1.lookupAllHostAddr(InetAddress.java:849) [rt.jar:1.6.0_29]
at java.net.InetAddress.getAddressFromNameService(InetAddress.java:1202) [rt.jar:1.6.0_29]
at java.net.InetAddress.getAllByName0(InetAddress.java:1153) [rt.jar:1.6.0_29]
at java.net.InetAddress.getAllByName(InetAddress.java:1083) [rt.jar:1.6.0_29]
at java.net.InetAddress.getAllByName(InetAddress.java:1019) [rt.jar:1.6.0_29]
at java.net.InetAddress.getByName(InetAddress.java:969) [rt.jar:1.6.0_29]
at org.jboss.as.network.OutboundSocketBinding.getDestinationAddress(OutboundSocketBinding.java:146)
at org.jboss.as.mail.extension.MailSessionService.getServerSocketAddress(MailSessionService.java:106)

The weird thing is, the port attribute appears to allow for expressions. When my port is set to this expression: "${rhq.server.email.smtp-port:25}", the server starts up fine (that is, after I set to the host to a legitimate hostname like "localhost")

This JIRA is to request that expressions be supported for the host attribute as it appears to be supported for the port attribute.