Investigation on auto-configuring Apache vhosts in Tomcat for use with Railo

Posted by Paul Klinkenberg in CFML , Railo on October 5, 2010

By Paul Klinkenberg, september 24, 2010

Contents

Option 1: 1 tomcat Host with multiple contexts, using a RewriteRule
- Pros
- Cons
Option 2: Hosts added to tomcat's server.xml, using ProxyPassMatch
- Pros
- Cons
Option 3: use mod_jk in Apache
- under investigation atm
Remarks and questions
- Same hostname, but different port and webroot
- Can Hosts be added to tomcat without restarting?

To start off, I haven't found a perfect solution yet. All options mentioned here have their pros and cons. If you can think of a better way, then please let me know!

What I wanted to do, is create a cfml script which checks the Apache configuration files, extracts all virtualhosts and the default hosts, and adds them to the tomcat configuration, without any necessary user interaction. That way, a web admin only needs to add his virtual host in one place: his frontend webserver.
Background for trying to accomplish this, is the problematic installation/configuration that users (and myself in the beginning) often encounter when trying out Railo.

Reason for using tomcat is that Railo will be distributed with tomcat by default.
IIS 6 and 7 will be handled later on; this document purely focuses on Apache 2.2.

Environment:

Apache 2.2.9+ webserver, used as the frontend webserver, with zero to many VirtualHosts.
Tomcat 6.0 with Railo

Option 1: 1 tomcat Host with multiple contexts, using a RewriteRule

As Sean Corfield pointed out on the Railo mailing list, you can configure everything as follows.

Tomcat server.xml:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<Server port="8005" shutdown="SHUTDOWN">
  [… some Listener directives …]
  <GlobalNamingResources>[…]</GlobalNamingResources> 
  <Service name="Catalina">
    <Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"  connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" />
    <Connector port="8009" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" />
    <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost">
      <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm" resourceName="UserDatabase"/>
      <Host name="localhost"/>
   </Engine>
  </Service>
</Server>

Apache's httpd.conf + optional extra included conf files:

[… lot of config here …]
# necessary for proxying to Tomcat:
<IfModule !proxy_module>
    LoadModule proxy_module libexec/apache2/mod_proxy.so
</IfModule>
<IfModule !rewrite_module>
    LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache2/mod_rewrite.so
</IfModule>

ProxyPreserveHost On
RewriteEngine On
## All urls ending in .cfm/cfc, and urls containing '.cfm/' and '.cfc/', are passed to Tomcat-Railo:
RewriteRule ^/(.*\.cf[cm])$ ajp://localhost:8009/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [P]
RewriteRule ^/(.*\.cf[cm])(/.*)$ ajp://localhost:8009/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1?path_info=$2 [P,QSA]
## Redirect all flash/flex/amf calls to Tomcat-Railo: WILL NOT WORK
RewriteRule ^/((flashservices/gateway|messagebroker/|flex2gateway/|openamf/gateway/).*)
 ajp://localhost:8009/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [P,NC]

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /developing/test.local/data/
    ServerName www.test.local
    # Vhosts by default do not inherit the main rewriteRules, so:
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteOptions Inherit
</VirtualHost>
[… more Vhosts and/or settings …]

For every hostname found in Apache's configuration, we need to add a file in tomcat's configuration, which will be picked up by tomcat almost instantaneous: {tomcat-install-dir}/conf/Catalina/localhost/{hostname}.xml
These xml files will contain the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Context docBase="{VHost document-root}" />

So for the site www.test.local, we will add a file /Applications/tomcat/conf/Catalina/localhost/www.test.local.xml, with the contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Context docBase="/developing/test.local/data/" />

Pros

Tomcat does not need to be restarted for changes to take effect.
In Apache, cfm usage can be enabled/disabled per virtualhost. (note: if an .htaccess file was placed in the webroot of such a non-cfm site with the same 2 config lines, then cfml would still be enabled).

Cons

In Apache, the web admin needs to add 2 lines within every <VirtualHost>
The cgi.script_name environment variable in Railo will be 'wrong'. When calling '/index.cfm' on www.test.local, the cgi.script_name will be '/www.test.local/index.cfm'.
Amf (Flash/flex remoting) will not work, because the servlet listens to “/flashservices/...”, not “/www.test.local/flashservices/...”.

Option 2: Hosts added to tomcat's server.xml, using ProxyPassMatch

This is more or less a default configuration, and tomcat needs to be restarted to pick up the changes.

Tomcat server.xml:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<Server port="8005" shutdown="SHUTDOWN">
  [… some Listener directives …]
  <GlobalNamingResources>[…]</GlobalNamingResources> 
  <Service name="Catalina"> 
    <Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"  connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" /> 
    <Connector port="8009" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" /> 
    <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost"> 
      <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm" resourceName="UserDatabase"/> 
      <Host name="www.test.local">
         <Context docBase="/developing/test.local/data/" />
      </Host>
      <!-- … more vhosts … -->
   </Engine> 
  </Service> 
</Server>

Apache's httpd.conf + optional extra included conf files:

[… lot of config here …]
# necessary for proxying to Tomcat:
<IfModule !proxy_module>
    LoadModule proxy_module libexec/apache2/mod_proxy.so
</IfModule>
<IfModule !rewrite_module>
    LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache2/mod_rewrite.so
</IfModule>

ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyPassMatch ^/(.+\.cf[cm]($|/.*))?$ ajp://localhost:8009/$1?path_info=$2
ProxyPassMatch ^/((flashservices/gateway|messagebroker/|flex2gateway/|openamf/gateway/).*) ajp://localhost:8009/$1

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /developing/test.local/data/
    ServerName www.test.local
</VirtualHost>
[… more Vhosts and/or settings …]

As you can see, there is no extra config necessary in the <VirtualHost> tags of Apache, which is great. The only really big downturn is, that tomcat needs to be restarted for the new <Host> settings to take effect.

Pros

No per-host settings necessary in Apache
Everything (except the SES urls/cgi.path_info) works like expected

Cons

Tomcat needs to be restarted on every config change. Since I am trying to create a cfml script which handles the config changes for tomcat, while it is running on tomcat, I am pessimistic about the option of restarting tomcat.
Also, this restarting would mean that a live server would become unresponsive for a few seconds at least,
and sessions in Railo would be cleared while restarting.

Option 3: use mod_jk in Apache

I am at the moment investigating this option, which seems to be the best option. It can be configured in Apache without having to edit the <virtualHost> containers, and it sends the cgi vars redirect_query_string and other redirect_* vars.

On the tomcat side, I can just add the <vhost> containers, so this is probably the best approach. I will blog more about this soon, after I have a complete setup.

Remarks and questions

Same hostname, but different port and webroot

In Apache, it is possible to have the same hostname listening to different ports, where it will serve from different webroots. For example:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /developing/test.local/data/
    ServerName www.test.local
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:81>
    DocumentRoot /developing/oldsite.test.local/data/
    ServerName www.test.local
</VirtualHost>

How can we distinguish between these 2 websites in tomcat? The <Host> tag does not have a port parameter, because it is by default only listening to one port.
With Option 1 described above, we could change the RewriteRule to something like:
RewriteRule ^/(.*\.cf[cm])$ ajp://localhost:8009/%{HTTP_HOST}%{SERVER_PORT}/$1 [P]
Then we would need to change the name of the tomcat xml files accordingly: from “www.test.local.xml” to “www.test.local80.xml”.
If a port is not explicitly defined in Apache, by using

<VirtualHost *:*>
    DocumentRoot /developing/test.local/data/
    ServerName www.test.local
</VirtualHost>

then I still have an escape. Since I gather all listening ports from the httpd.conf (defined as “Listen 80” and “Listen 443” etc.), I would just add tomcat xml files for all those ports, for this host.

With option 2, it is a bit more complicated. Since tomcat is then only looking at the host name, I would need to start extra instances of tomcat for every “same hostname, but different port and different webroot”. Also, I would need to change the ProxyPassMatch directives to use the right ajp listener port (i.e. ajp://localhost:8009/).
Now, because there are limits to what an automated script can and should do, I would just limit the amount of tomcat instances to 2, where all sites on port 80 will go to instance 1, and all other requests to instance 2. That way, we have the most obvious Apache config covered, where an ssl site has the same (or no defined) hostname, but another webroot:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /developing/test.local/data/
    ServerName www.test.local
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:443>
    DocumentRoot /developing/members.test.local/data/
    ServerName www.test.local
</VirtualHost>

Can Hosts be added to tomcat without restarting?

I have read the tomcat documentation (look at paragraph 6) which says that you can also add contexts (not Hosts) by adding new directories and an xml file like this: $CATALINA_BASE/conf/[enginename]/[hostname]/context.xml.default. I have tried to create new Hosts that way, but to no avail. Even after a restart, tomcat did not use the directory as a new Host.

This article about tomcat reloading/restarting gives a lot of reload options, but none on how to load new Hosts.

Edit 5 oct. 2010: on the Railo mailing list, thread "Can we eliminate double virtual host administration?", I already posted this whole text. Denstar then suggested to use the tomcat host manager to immediately add the virtual hosts. Now, by using that manager, and also writing the virtual host into the server.xml file, this problem is now solved!

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