I am inquiring about the algorithm Tomcat uses for processing the server.xmlfile on startup.
When Tomcat is started, it processes all hosts listed in the server.xml file for catalina policy compliance. Issues arise when there is an account that does not comply with our policy file and Tomcat refuses to start up. 90% of the time, it prints the host it is processing just prior to error. This obviously allows us to disable that host, and Tomcat will start. However, the other 10% of the time, it will print an error and not specify the host it is processing that caused that error. Therefore, we are unable to determine which host to disable. This results in having to do a binary search on the server.xml, commenting out large chunks of hosts until a single culprit is left. On this latter 10%, it will print the last successful host processed prior to the error... but this does not help, as we can not determine the next host in succession. I would assume that Tomcat processes the hosts on startup in the order they lie in the server.xml file. However, that is not the case. They jump all over the place. An example would be: <Host name='domain.com' debug='0' appBase='/path/to/java/app' unpackWARs='true' autoDeploy='false'> <Alias>www.domain.com</Alias> <Context path='' docBase='' debug='0' reloadable='false'/> <Valve className='org.apache.catalina.authenticator.SingleSignOn' debug='0'/> <Valve className='org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve' directory='' prefix='tomcat_access.' suffix='.log' pattern='common' resolveHosts='false'/> </Host> We have a fair number of hosts on each java box. It neither sorts the server.xml by alphabetic order, or file succession as it will skip from host 32, to 864, to 1026, to 127, etc... (jumping all over the place). Can anyone explain the server.xml sorting algorithm Tomcat uses on start? Regards, -Kyle
