Truckman wrote:
Greetings,
I apologize for the length/complexity of this but I've learned over the
years providing more detail generally saves time of those who are kind
enough to assist.
I have a slew of "standard" webservers which run the usual LAMP model -
CentOS6, Apache 2.2.15-5, MySQL 5.0.77-4, and PHP 5.3.2-6. I host many
virtual domains and each virtual server runs off a unique directory, roughly
matching the assigned domain name, like so:
http://forums.example.com translates to /var/www/html.forums
No problems whatsoever, except now one of those virtual domains requires
Tomcat6, and I'm trying to figure out how to integrate Tomcat6 for one
virtual domain only. This way, all the other domains I host can remain
"as-is" in their working state.
Using Yum, I installed Tomcat6 and the various auxiliary RPMs:
apache-tomcat-apis-0.1-1.el6.noarch
jakarta-commons-dbcp-tomcat5-1.2.1-13.8.el6.noarch
jakarta-commons-pool-tomcat5-1.3-12.7.el6.x86_64
tomcat6-6.0.24-24.el6_0.noarch
tomcat6-admin-webapps-6.0.24-24.el6_0.noarch
tomcat6-docs-webapp-6.0.24-24.el6_0.noarch
tomcat6-el-2.1-api-6.0.24-24.el6_0.noarch
tomcat6-javadoc-6.0.24-24.el6_0.noarch
tomcat6-jsp-2.1-api-6.0.24-24.el6_0.noarch
tomcat6-lib-6.0.24-24.el6_0.noarch
tomcat6-log4j-6.0.24-24.el6_0.noarch
tomcat6-servlet-2.5-api-6.0.24-24.el6_0.noarch
tomcat6-webapps-6.0.24-24.el6_0.noarch
I started Tomcat6, added it to chkconfig so it automatically starts, and as
I expected Tomcat6 answers on port 8009 (ajp) and port 8080 (tomcat).
The customer then passed me a forums.war file, stating it needs to be in the
root directory of the virtual server, so I placed it in the
/var/www/html.forums directory.
Knowing that apache is answering port 80, and that needs to be forwarded
"up" to port 8080, I made the following changes in the virtual server
configuration, like so:
<VirtualHost *:80>
Servername forums.example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html.forums
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
ProxyPass ajp://localhost:8009/
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Now, when I hit http://forums.example.com, I get the expected Tomcat6
welcome page, but http://forums.example.com/forums.war cannot be found. I'm
assuming that's because forums.war is located in the virtual directory in
"regular apache" and not where "tomcat apache" is expecting it.
I am really confused as what I should be doing next, or even if what I've
done so far was "correct".
The goal is to have "regular" apache answer port 80, and call upon "tomcat"
on port 8080 (or 8009 ajp) as required by the web application stored in
"regular" apache's virtual server directory for that domain.
Hi.
Thank you for your nice and thorough explanation above, which makes a nice break from the
"I want to use Tomcat to connect to my CFDTY web service. Tell me asap and in detail how
to do it" kind of request.
Since you appear to be a real newbie with Tomcat (sorry if I'm wrong there), I have tried
to write the following for someone who does not know Tomcat at all, but knows Apache httpd
well. I am thus trying to give you an overview, and some elementary pointers which may
help you understand the excellent and extensive on-line documentation of Tomcat, available
at http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/
This will take just a few minutes to read, and will probably save you (and others on this
list) a couple of hours of talking at cross-purposes.
Tomcat is a Java Servlet Engine first, and a webserver second.
As a java servlet engine, its *primary* function is to provide an environment suitable to
run java servlets. Java servlets in turn are small (or less small) pieces of java code,
which are usually grouped in a collection called a "web application", or "webapp".
So a "webapp" is a collection of such java servlets (programs) and of pure html pages
(and/or of html pages containing a mixture of html and java code), the whole collection
being designed generally to achieve something useful in a WWW context.
To make a parallel at this point with Apache httpd (with which you seem more
familiar) :
Imagine that you have an Apache-httpd VirtualHost, with a DocumentRoot in
/srv/www/myhost1/docs, and underneath that DocumentRoot you have a sub-directory
/srv/www/myhost1/docs/accounting/ which contains the html pages and php scripts etc..
which together constitute .. an accounting application.
In Tomcat, this sub-directory and all the files in it would be called "the
accounting webapp".
One difference between Tomcat and Apache-httpd, is that under Tomcat you can install such
an application in different ways :
- you can, as with Apache-httpd, just copy all the files that make up the webapp, in the
sub-directory "accounting" of the Tomcat "DocumentRoot" (which under Tomcat is called the
"appBase")
- or you can zip all these files together into one single file named "accounting.war", and
just drop that single file in the Tomcat appBase. And Tomcat (with the appropriate setup),
will automatically create the "accounting" subdirectory and unzip that .war file into all
the constituents of the accounting webapp, inside that sub-directory.
(That, by the way, was an explanation of what a "war-file" is : it stands for Web
Application Archive, and it is just a zip file).
So, once you have dropped that .war file under the Tomcat appBase, you never refer to it
again (at least, not in URLs). It has been unzipped, and the application has been
"deployed" (into all its constituent files), and Tomcat also automatically starts the
application.
And if you want to update the accounting application (even with Tomcat running), you just
drop another version of that accounting.war file in the same place, and Tomcat will
- stop the old application
- delete it
- expand the new accounting.war file in the "accounting" sub-directory again
- and restart the application
Neat, he ? Apache-httpd does not really let you do this on-the-fly.
Another difference is the following :
- under Apache-httpd, the DocumentRoot is, for example, /srv/www/myhost1/docs/. So
anything that you put directly under there (for example, a file named "some_page.html),
can be called up by the URL http://myhost1/some_page.html.
- under Tomcat however, you never put something directly under the appBase (which is
usually a directory like /var/lib/tomcat/webapps/). Instead, if you want a document to be
called by a URL like http://myhost1:8080/some_page.html, you put it under a sub-directory
"/ROOT/" of the appBase (e.g. as /var/lib/tomcat/webapps/ROOT/some_page.html)
Alomost finally : the way in which Tomcat "maps" a request URL to a web application is
similar, but not quite the same, as how Apache-httpd maps a URL to a sub-directory of the
DocumentRoot.
In Tomcat, there is a notion of a "default application" : if Tomcat tries to map a URL to
a webapp (which it does much in the same way as Apache-httpd), but fails to do so, then
Tomcat will "send" the request to the default application, which is .. the one which is
under webapps/ROOT/ (supposing that there is one). (And for example, that's how you got
the Tomcat welcome page).
So now, you can go to http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/, and start
reading further.
In parallel, find some empty directory on your workstation, take that ".war" file which
your customer gave you, and use the unzip function to expand it.
That will show you what files are in there, and give you an idea of the internal structure
of a webapp.
And still one more thing : you have chosen to install Tomcat using a pre-packaged CenTOS
version of Tomcat, and this can make things a bit more complicated for the people here
trying to help you, in the following sense :
The "standard Tomcat" which you can download from the Tomcat website
http://tomcat.apache.org, unpacks in a simple standard directory hierarchy which looks
like this :
(top-install-directory, e.g. /usr/local/tomcat7/), with sub-directories
- bin : the executables
- conf : the configuration files
- common : common library files
- webapps : the applications (webapps) (of which ROOT)
- log : the logfiles
- work : place for temporary files
So with a distribution like that one, it is easy because we can tell you exactly where to
look, and where to place things (like your .war file).
With the pre-packaged Linux versions, things are different. For a whole series of good
reasons to do with package management, these packages tend to distribute the Tomcat
directories and files all over the place, and put this all back together using a profusion
of symlinks. So it can be a challenge finding exactly where all the files are.
You will probably find the "top tomcat directory" as /usr/share/tomcat or /var/lib/tomcat,
and from there be led through a series of links to places like
- /etc/tomcat --> /var/lib/tomcat/conf
- /var/log/tomcat (the logfiles)
- /var/lib/tomcat/conf (which is also linked to by /etc/tomcat)
- /var/lib/tomcat/webapps
- /var/lib/tomcat/work --> /var/cache/tomcat
etc..
So, try to locate these directories on your server, write them down, and then we can start
helping you with your particular issue.
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