Web-server – Serving static content with Apache web server and Tomcat

apache-2.2tomcatweb-server

I've configured Apache web server and Tomcat like this:

I created a new file in apache2/sites-available, named it "myDomain" with this content:

<VirtualHost *:80>

ServerAdmin admin@myDomain.com
ServerName myDomain.com
ServerAlias www.myDomain.com

ProxyPass / ajp://localhost:8009

<Proxy *>
AllowOverride AuthConfig
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
Options -Indexes
</Proxy>

</VirtualHost>

Enabled mod_proxy and myDomain

a2enmod proxy_ajp
a2ensite myDomain

Edited Tomcat's server.xml (inside the Engine tag)

<Host name="myDomain.com" appBase="webapps/myApp">
<Context path="" docBase="."/>
</Host>
<Host name="www.myDomain.com" appBase="webapps/myApp">
<Context path="" docBase="."/>
</Host>

This works great. But I don't like to put static files (html, images, videos etc.) into {tomcat home}/webapps/myApp's subfolders instead I'd like to put them the apache webserver's root WWW directory's subdirectories. And I'd like Apache web server to serve these files alone.

How could I do this? So all incoming request will be forwarded to Tomcat except those that ask for a static file.

Best Answer

You probably want to use ProxyPassMatch. You can use it like:

ProxyPassMatch ^(/.*\.cgi)$ ajp://localhost:8009$1

to proxy all requests ending in .CGI. If you wish to proxy multiple extensions just add more lines or edit the regex. Then you just have to make sure your VirtualHost is setup to serve the remaining image types.

Related Solutions

Tomcat – Adobe Coldfusion Railo OpenBD Apache Tomcat Multiple Sites

You generally want your Tomcat Host's appbase="webapps" (default) and have the Context's docBase point to your Web root (docBase="/Users/[my username]/Websites/example.mydev/wwwroot/"). Your Web root will contain a WEB-INF for whichever WAR you're using (ColdFusion/OpenBD/Railo). It sounds like you're using a symlink or something for the WEB-INF dir?

In any case, you can't run requests against 3 different WARs in the same Web root (at least not without some fancy connector stuff--you could let a JRun instance/connector run while having WEB-INF of Railo or OpenBD in the Web root to then use 2 different Apache vhosts to handle... but this all sounds messy:). So, since you can't run them at the same time with this setup, I'm not sure why you're using separate host names?

It's also worth noting that you'll likely need to restart the Tomcat service each time you replace (re-map symlink) the WEB-INF folder.

Finally, if you do have the same Web root (docBase) for all three Tomcat Host entries, I'd imagine this will most certainly cause problems -- this could be the root of your errors, but not sure. Since you want the same Web root for each host, you might as well use an Alias (or just one host), something like this:

<Host name="local.mydev" appBase="webapps">
<Alias>local.mydev.railo</Alias>
<Alias>local.mydev.openbd</Alias>
<Context path="" docBase="/Users/[my username]/Websites/example.mydev/wwwroot" />
</Host>

Hosting 2 webapps under 1 apache/tomcat

i was being an idiot. i ended up shutting down apache and connecting to 8080 on both domains. the problem persisted, so i knew it was not a mod_jk or apache issue.

the problem was that i was accessing both domains as www.domain but i didnt alias those subdomains in tomcat

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