Mark Eggers wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: André Warnier <a...@ice-sa.com>
To: Tomcat Users List <users@tomcat.apache.org>
Cc:
Sent: Sunday, October 23, 2011 5:08 AM
Subject: Re: URI mapping
Let's restart from the beginning.
You have, say, 3 Tomcat servers running, and for the sake of the example
let's say that these are
- a Tomcat 5.x server
- a Tomcat 6.x server
- a Tomcat 7.x server
You want to run the same applications on all of them (with identical names on
each server), because for instance these are test servers serving to verify that
a given application runs fine under each of these Tomcat versions.
You want to be able to choose which Tomcat server you are accessing, by means of
some URI prefix.
Example :
a request with URI "http://myhost/tomcat7/webapp1"; should be forwarded
to webapp1 on Tomcat7, while a request with URI
"http://myhost/tomcat5/webapp1"; should be forwarded to Tomcat5.
Of course, once "inside" the respective Tomcat, you want this prefix
to have been removed, so that the applications inside this Tomcat look similar
to the same ones in other Tomcats, name-wise.
Example :
a request with URI "http://myhost/tomcat7/webapp1"; should be forwarded
to webapp1 on Tomcat7, whith a request URI of "/webapp1" (and not
"/tomcat7/webapp1").
For this, you set up a front-end proxy Apache httpd, which should forward the
requests to individual Tomcats in function of the URI prefix, and strip this
prefix while doing so.
Preferably, you would like to do the proxying via mod_jk.
That is a problem, because the standard proxying instructions of mod_jk (JkMount
e.g.), do not provide a syntax for forwarding URI's, and modifying these
URIs at the same time.
That is why Mark originally oriented you to mod_proxy and mod_proxy_ajp, which
can do that, for example as :
ProxyPass /tomcat7 ajp://tomcat7-host:8017
ProxyPass /tomcat6 ajp://tomcat6-host:8016
ProxyPass /tomcat5 ajp://tomcat7-host:8015
(and have each Tomcat listen on the apropriate port with its AJP Connector)
Using the above, a request with URI "http://myhost/tomcat7/webapp1";
will be forwarded to the tomcat7 server with a URI of "/webapp1",
while a request with URI "http://myhost/tomcat5/webapp1"; will be
forwarded to the tomcat5 server with a URI (also) of "/webapp1".
As far as I understand, this is what you want to achieve (although it is not via
mod_jk, but via mod_proxy_ajp instead).
Mark however pointed out the drawbacks of modifying the URI : when one of these
applications generates a self-referencing URI, it will not by default re-insert
the stripped host prefix. For example, if application "/webapp1" on
tomcat7 creates a page with a link to itself like
href="/webapp1/something", it will not magically know to make this
into href="/tomcat7/webapp1/something". And when this link is clicked
in the browser, it will generate a request to
"http://myhost/webapp1/something";, and the above Proxy instructions in
the front-end won't know what to do with it and will ignore it.
And the same happens with redirects etc..
You can overcome this, but it is likely in the end to create more hassle than
you really want.
On the other hand, if you do /not/ modify the URI while proxying the call, then
you end up with a much less easy configuration on the side of the Tomcats, as
you have seen before.
So maybe let's look at another kind of solution, involving DNS and
VirtualHosts.
Would a solution whereby you access the different Tomcats as follows be
acceptable ?
- http://myhost-tomcat7.company.com/webapp1 is forwarded to tomcat7's
webapp1
- http://myhost-tomcat6.company.com/webapp1 is forwarded to tomcat6's
webapp1
- http://myhost-tomcat5.company.com/webapp1 is forwarded to tomcat5's
webapp1
If yes, then do as outlined below.
For a start, I suppose that you want to have an Apache httpd front-end, and that
the Apache httpd and all tomcats, all run on the same physical host.
Step 1 :
Suppose that the front-end Apache httpd host is currently known via DNS as
"myhost.company.com".
Define 3 additional DNS aliases for it :
- myhost-tomcat7.company.com
- myhost-tomcat6.company.com
- myhost-tomcat5.company.com
Step 2 :
define 3 new VirtualHost's in the Apache httpd front-end, one each with
- ServerName myhost-tomcat7.company.com
- ServerName myhost-tomcat6.company.com
- ServerName myhost-tomcat5.company.com
(I assume that you know how to do that)
Step 3 :
In each of these VirtualHost configurations, add the following lines :
- in the "myhost-tomcat7.company.com" host, add
ProxyPass / ajp://myhost-tomcat7.company.com:8017
ProxyPassReverse / ajp://myhost-tomcat7.company.com:8017
(and similarly for the other VirtualHost's)
Step 4 :
make each of your Tomcats listen on the corresponding AJP port :
- tomcat7 listens on port 8017
- tomcat6 listens on port 8016
- tomcat5 listens on port 8015
(in their respective AJP Connector)
The advantage of this is that you are no longer modifying the request URI's,
with all the complications that this brings.
All you are doing is modifying the hostname:port part, and that only requires a
ProxyPassReverse directive in the httpd front-end, to rewrite possible redirect
headers generated by the Tomcats.
Also this way, self-referencing URIs generated by the Tomcats will also work,
without applications modifications.
Cookies may still require help, check the http config help for that.
Andre,
Your suggestion is how I set up multiple Tomcats (CATALINA_HOME /
CATALINA_BASE) and virtual hosts within those Tomcats. I map each of the Tomcat
virtual hosts to separate named virtual hosts on Apache HTTPD.
I use mod_jk, and each virtual host gets its own uriworkermap.properties file.
That way I can add and delete Tomcat applications on the fly for each Apache
HTTPD virtual host that's mapped to the appropriate Tomcat virtual host.
Each Apache HTTPD named virtual host forwarded to a single Tomcat uses the same
mod_jk <Connector> (although I could add multiple connectors in server.xml).
Yes, there are a number of variations to the scheme, depending on whether httpd and the
various Tomcats are or not running inside the same host, or whether you want to have
several virtual hosts in Tomcat. In this case though, it seemed that the original
question mentioned different /versions/ of Tomcat, which you cannot really do with virtual
hosts or with several instances of Tomcat running from the same CATALINA_HOME.
If each Tomcat runs on a separate physical host (or if you have a host with several IP
addresses, you can have them all using the same AJP port.
Each Tomcat virtual host mapped to an Apache HTTPD named virtual host gets its own
manager application. The access is controlled in part by directives in an Apache
HTTPD <Location> block. I suppose I could add another Realm for each Tomcat
virtual host to control that host's manager application as well.
I've tested this set up with simple applications and it seems to work fine. I
only have two real issues. One, I don't know any way to combine dynamic Apache
HTTPD virtual hosts with mod_jk and JkMount directives. Two, jk-status and
jk-manager refer to all mod_jk connections on a particular Apache HTTPD server.
Neither of these are show-stoppers.
My question in all of this is about cookies. I gather what you're saying is
that if a person accesses the following:
http://some-host/app (receives cookie)
Then that cookie could be used in accessing
http://other-host/app (uses cookie)
The issue about the cookies is that each Tomcat will issue its cookies with its own
hostname (whatever /it/ thinks that is), and unless you do something, that's how they will
be sent to the browser. You may have to tell the proxying httpd that it also needs to
rewrite this hostname in the cookies returned by Tomcat, to be the name of the
corresponding httpd VirtualHost. Otherwise the browser may not re-send the cookie when it
should.
You should not have that issue when, in Tomcat, you use the same hostname as the
corresponding httpd VirtualHost; but you may have it in other cases.
I may be getting myself a bit confused here, but I think that this could happen.
Anyway, there is the ProxyPassReverseCookieDomain to fix this.
if named virtual hosts are used for some-host and other-host (mapping them to
the same IP address and port).
Is this correct?
If so, I need to investigate how to manage this with Apache HTTPD. I suppose
it's also very unlikely (but possible) to get matching session ids from
independent Tomcats running in this environment?
If you have any pointers to the Apache HTTPD documentation concerning this, I
would appreciate it (I know, off-topic).
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