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.
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