I have been trying three scenarios. So far one works (least security and not good for all OS versions). Again thanks to both Marks for the pointers, but I am afraid they are not working yet.
My goal is to enable one directory to be used which is outside the application (and tomcat too) .../webapps/mywebapp hierarchy which mywebapp.war will replace with a new release use 1: to store/retrieve images locally to a machine under application control (db stores names of files) use 2: to store a static movie - demo (no update - this is the simple test case I try) The goal is to get this stuff out of the war file (leaving nothing, an empty dir, or a link as needed - see below). All of the below require apache/tomcat to be down when you make the changes, then restart to test a) IF you have linux (or unix) or osx - you can do symbolic linking simply move the directory and link (my case below): cd ..../webapps/mywebapp; mv images /opt; ln -s /opt/images and to enable symbolic linking to other directories on your machine (all of them) create a ..../webapps/mywebapp/META-INF/context.xml file (or edit the one you have) <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <Context allowLinking="true"> </Context> advantages for this method: works simply faults: MS os's don't do symbolic; also opens up ALL linking (security issues? probably) BUT THERE ARE 2 other SAFER more restrictive ways below, both also done in the same context.xml file (if I can get either of them to work - the examples often say the server.xml file, but there is only one of them in the top tomcat conf directory, which has NO context references - but if they go there, then path= probably needs to be specified.) b) <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <Context aliases="/images=/opt/images" /> </Context> c) <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <Context <Resources className="org.apache.naming.resources.VirtualDirContext" extraResourcePaths="/images=/opt/images" /> </Context> ------------------------- These are both more security conscious and might should work for MS (with MS correct paths such as d:\images) Which of these is simpler and/or better - I have no idea. Net comparisons don't say. but the VirtualDirContext.html pages say: DO NOT USE FOR PRODUCTION of course- they don't say why NOT Why both require the escaped greater than sign, beats me too. "/>" I would have thought it would be simply ">" on the 2nd and 3rd lines resp. (b and c) NEITHER OF THESE WORKED FOR ME! (so far and I have tried many variants) Do I have to have the symbolic link (in Linux - I did for a) obviously) or should this be a plain empty directories (like Linux/Unix mount points) or should there be no "../webapps/myapp/images" anything at all? In the manual version there are more parameters, but most folks say to drop "path=mywebapp" and the rest seem to not be relevant to what I am doing so I cut them out. Maybe that is the problem. Here is the example I found under VirtualDirContext online <Context path="/mywebapp" docBase="/Users/theuser/mywebapp/src/main/webapp" > <Resources className="org.apache.naming.resources.VirtualDirContext" extraResourcePaths="/pictures=/Users/theuser/mypictures,/movies=/Users/theuser/mymovies" /> <Loader className="org.apache.catalina.loader.VirtualWebappLoader" virtualClasspath="/Users/theuser/mywebapp/target/classes" /> <JarScanner scanAllDirectories="true" /> </Context> On Sunday, December 15, 2013 7:39 PM, Christopher Schultz <ch...@christopherschultz.net> wrote: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Martin, On 12/15/13, 4:52 PM, Martin Gainty wrote: > Mark I assume you're referring to Virtual DirContext...? <Context > path="/mywebapp" docBase="/Users/theuser/mywebapp/src/main/webapp" > > You shouldn't use the "path" attribute, here. You should know this. > <Resources > className="org.apache.naming.resources.VirtualDirContext" > > extraResourcePaths="/WEB-INF/classes=/Users/theuser/mywebapp/target/classes,/pictures=/Users/theuser/mypictures,/movies=/Users/theuser/mymovies"/> VirtualDirContext > is not necessary, but it is one option. - -chris -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.15 (Darwin) Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJSrkvIAAoJEBzwKT+lPKRYZ4cP/1SvH4mwBFUIjmtiGnBfa3vU IHwSsyfHaoyO55p1/1AasP6avv8rjpMl9i8d+kmYolIiYMF461UCGTuE44SzHP1Y O1/VayieLS3A/pn2YS86LqfXTuuKD4pWQ93TDEihchpXpJ+/B3sMfJeCzvRRYue7 PZ32luoXvsHEgA2nt7Qpp88Nz+9RggYAw5KlnTrnndqyMl8FyWLkTccpaqTthOnW LcZgieAW7ySWZRbyAiXNEsk6kVDTat9z/EAeDmMWqN43LJikxLh4Glez3jv80mhy cNtZ43mqroyCRF82nSO6eHxeSxIh70kdVaz6/x7QaBNAWIe96DHlQFTZwBnClzwY T5uHYEBwSTfZ7GFlT/z+zGWxhX0fme9q9auZyXnufEHqPadKWkGdbjFN4dgifYm6 Js/O5o2TsCK9RKYbNomPygZ+fek6AqtFtEOvimyFd0Udml4hoQKzTOc81Rb/Dhx9 J/u47Oj754kTL18mv0Ci1ZOB4IQ1jO8YZDz35RU/9MZeoQ+LKkSxZHZTL1/PaH0u h15XSAWv5MVHelPJM7WZWfrQdGAuYKUR+QOB1T4zoW+HKkcjsY7pilO3FJvrv84Y +Xei2lxZLFPjF8c50HYuawqt5/un9vvARVofo2Hb5xr0E6gNxxma8X7LvIPWJ5YZ 3ii7LoCyfyTASfv7sPk0 =wGs5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@tomcat.apache.org
