Tomcat – How to Remove ROOT Directory

tomcat

Is it possible to remove the tomcat ROOT directory? We have several applications running on a tomcat instance. I was asked to clean the webapps directory up and remove any unused folders. I removed
manager
host-manager
docs
examples
Everything is fine, as I expected. I looked at the ROOT folder an there are images, a couple of jsp pages and a WEB-INF directory. None of these are used by our applications, so I removed the ROOT directory. Now the server hangs on startup and my applications don't start. Can the ROOT directory be removed? It appears that according to the Apache docs it is optional:

"The ROOT web application presents a very low security risk but it does include the version of Tomcat that is being used. The ROOT web application should normally be removed from a publicly accessible Tomcat instance, not for security reasons, but so that a more appropriate default page is shown to users."

I tried leaving just an empty ROOT directory, but it still hangs. Is there a configuration that I'm missing somewhere that could be looking for the ROOT directory?

Tomcat version 8.5.15

Best Answer

Many Tomcat components assume that an org.apache.catalina.Context is available for each request. If you delete the ROOT application, this won't be true for all URI paths and NullPointerExceptions will follow. This certainly happens with the RewriteValve, but may apply to other components.

Therefore it is better to have a ROOT application, but it can also be an empty directory.

Whether this behaviour of Tomcat components is a bug or not is susceptible to discussion. Personally I consider a missing ROOT context as a misconfiguration, but you can file a bug report if you think otherwise.

Related Solutions

How to Secure Tomcat 6.x – Essential Steps

You can install Tomcat 6 to run under jsvc as user tomcat (not as root). Here's what I did last time I set it up:

I installed the Tomcat application under /usr/java/tomcat (CATALINA_HOME) and an instance under /var/lib/tomcat (CATALINA_BASE):

cd /usr/java
sudo tar xzvf ~/downloads/apache-tomcat-6.0.18.tar.gz
sudo ln -s apache-tomcat-6.0.18 tomcat
sudo /usr/sbin/useradd -d /var/lib/tomcat -c "Apache Tomcat" -m -s /sbin/nologin tomcat
cd /var/lib/tomcat
sudo mkdir logs work temp
sudo chown tomcat:tomcat logs temp work
(cd /usr/java/tomcat && sudo tar cvf - conf webapps) | sudo tar xvf -
sudo chmod -R g+rw webapps conf
sudo chown -R tomcat:tomcat webapps conf
cd webapps/
sudo rm -rf docs examples manager host-manager
cd ../conf
sudo chmod g+r *

Then I built the jsvc wrapper:

cd
tar xzvf downloads/apache-tomcat-6.0.18.tar.gz
tar xzvf apache-tomcat-6.0.18/bin/jsvc.tar.gz
cd jsvc-src
chmod +x configure
./configure --with-java=$JAVA_HOME
make
./jsvc --help
sudo cp jsvc /usr/local/sbin/

Finally, I tightened the permissions on the instance directories:

cd /var/lib/tomcat
sudo chmod -R 0700 conf
sudo chmod -R 0750 logs
sudo chmod -R 0700 temp
sudo chmod -R 0700 work
sudo chmod -R 0770 webapps/
sudo chown -R tomcat:tomcat conf
sudo chown -R tomcat:tomcat logs

When you run Tomcat now, you'll need to start it using jsvc, so add this script as /etc/init.d/tomcat and symlink it appropriately:

#!/bin/sh
#
# tomcat       Startup script for the Apache Tomcat Server running under jsvc
#
# chkconfig: 345 85 15
# description: Apache Tomcat
# pidfile: /var/run/jsvc.pid

JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_13
CATALINA_HOME=/usr/java/apache-tomcat-6.0.18
CATALINA_BASE=/var/lib/tomcat
JAVA_OPTS="-Djava.awt.headless=true"
JMX_OPTS="-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=1099 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false"

DAEMON_APP=/usr/local/sbin/jsvc
TOMCAT_USER=tomcat

# Everything below should be okay
PID_FILE=/var/run/jsvc.pid
LOCK_FILE=/var/lock/tomcat

PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin
. /lib/init/vars.sh

. /lib/lsb/init-functions

[ -x $JAVA_HOME/bin/java ] || exit 0
[ -x $DAEMON_APP ] || exit 0
[ -d $CATALINA_HOME/bin ] || exit 0
[ -d $CATALINA_BASE ] || exit 0

RETVAL=0
prog="jsvc"

CLASSPATH=\
$JAVA_HOME/lib/tools.jar:\
$CATALINA_HOME/bin/commons-daemon.jar:\
$CATALINA_HOME/bin/bootstrap.jar

start() {
  # Start Tomcat
  log_daemon_msg "Starting Apache Tomcat"
  $DAEMON_APP \
    -user $TOMCAT_USER \
    -home $JAVA_HOME \
    -wait 10 \
    -pidfile $PID_FILE \
    -outfile $CATALINA_BASE/logs/catalina.out \
    -errfile $CATALINA_BASE/logs/catalina.out \
    $JAVA_OPTS $JMX_OPTS \
    -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager \
    -Djava.util.logging.config.file=$CATALINA_BASE/conf/logging.properties \
    -Dcatalina.home=$CATALINA_HOME \
    -Dcatalina.base=$CATALINA_BASE \
    -Djava.io.tmpdir=$CATALINA_BASE/temp \
    -cp $CLASSPATH \
    org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap start 2>/dev/null 1>&2
  RETVAL=$?
  if [ 0 -eq $RETVAL ]; then
    touch $LOCK_FILE
    log_end_msg 0
  else
    log_end_msg 1
  fi
}

stop() {
  # Stop tomcat
  log_daemon_msg "Stopping Apache Tomcat"
  $DAEMON_APP \
    -stop \
    -pidfile $PID_FILE \
    org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap 2>/dev/null 1>&2
  RETVAL=$?
  if [ 0 -eq $RETVAL ]; then
    rm -rf $LOCK_FILE
    log_end_msg 0
  else
    log_end_msg 1
  fi
}

restart() {
  stop
  sleep 5
  start
}

# See how we were called.
case "$1" in
  start)
    start
    ;;
  stop)
    stop
    ;;
  restart)
    restart
    ;;
  status)
    status $prog
    ;;
  condrestart)
    [ -f $LOCK_FILE ] && restart || :
    ;;
  *)
    log_action_msg "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|status|condrestart}"
    exit 1
esac

exit $?

Mysql – Tomcat does not recognize the MySQL .jar library

Tomcat does not use the CLASSPATH in the webapp's classloader. You can add paths and files to the common.loader line in conf/catalina.properties. The classloader should have found the class when the jar was in WEB-INF/lib. I can't explain why it hasn't. If you are using 5.5, you can place the jar in common/lib or lib/ if you're using tomcat6. This path is loaded by a higher level classloader and should be picked up first.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

How to Secure Tomcat 6.x – Essential Steps

Mysql – Tomcat does not recognize the MySQL .jar library

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