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I have been struggling with this for a day and more now. As i am new to server setup stuff. Been following many tutorial and docs on net regarding the same, many hit and run, But got no luck.

Here is what i did till now.

  1. I got my vps running and it has Apache running at port 80.

  2. I installed Tomcat 7.0.55 at port 8080 and it is up and running.

Now we have to route traffic from Apache to Tomcat

  1. Following

    https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-apache-http-server-as-reverse-proxy-using-mod_proxy-extension

modifying the 000-default.conf of apache to look like this.

<VirtualHost *:80> # The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port that # the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating # redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName # specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to # match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this # value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless. # However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly. #ServerName www.example.com ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost DocumentRoot /var/www/html # Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn, # error, crit, alert, emerg. # It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular # modules, e.g. #LogLevel info ssl:warn ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined # For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are # enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to # include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the # following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only # after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf". #Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *:*> ProxyPreserveHost On # Servers to proxy the connection, or; # List of application servers: # Usage: # ProxyPass / http://[IP Addr.]:[port]/ # ProxyPassReverse / http://[IP Addr.]:[port]/ # Example: ProxyPass / http://localhost:8080/ ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/ ServerName localhost </VirtualHost>

This successfully redirected my each request to tomcat.

  1. Now running my registered domain name in browser. www.mytestdomain.com. i am landing on the default tomcat page. and writing the server ip in browser address bar is also landing me to the same tomcat page.

5 Now i need www.mytestdomain.com to point to my app deployed in tomcat at $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/www.mytestdomain.com

6 And other test.mytestdomain.com to point to my app deployed in tomcat at $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/test.mytestdomain.com

7 And xx.xx.xx.xx my ip to land at default tomcat page only.

That what i want to achieve and not able to do that.

8 Now following

http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/virtual-hosting-howto.html

I updated my $CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml to have one more host. After updating my server.xml file look 

 <Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"> <!-- SingleSignOn valve, share authentication between web applications Documentation at: /docs/config/valve.html --> <!-- <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.authenticator.SingleSignOn" /> --> <!-- Access log processes all example. Documentation at: /docs/config/valve.html Note: The pattern used is equivalent to using pattern="common" --> <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" directory="logs" prefix="localhost_access_log." suffix=".txt" pattern="%h %l %u %t &quot;%r&quot; %s %b" /> </Host> <Host name="www.mytestdomain.com" appBase="webapps-new" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"> <!-- SingleSignOn valve, share authentication between web applications Documentation at: /docs/config/valve.html --> <!-- <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.authenticator.SingleSignOn" /> --> <!-- Access log processes all example. Documentation at: /docs/config/valve.html Note: The pattern used is equivalent to using pattern="common" --> <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" directory="logs" prefix="www.mytestdomain.com_log." suffix=".txt" pattern="%h %l %u %t &quot;%r&quot; %s %b" /> </Host>

  1. I created new appBase directory mkdir $CATALINA_HOME/webapps-new

  2. Within $CATALINA_HOME/webapps-new folder i created symlink for my webapp. ln -s ../webapp/www.mytestdomain.com ROOT

  3. cd $CATALINA_HOME/webapps-new/ROOT/WEB_INF/

  4. Created context.xml in META-INF file with content as below.

  1. Restarted Apache and Restarted Tomcat - [ok]

  2. Results. --> www.mytestdomain.com in browser is hitting my tomcat webapp properly.

  3. But test.mytestdomain.com and xx.xx.xx.xx my ip in browser is also hitting my same webapp as for www.mytestdomain.com . They should have gone to the default host.

I had tried many other tricks but not luck.

Any help would be appreciated. This is very much possible that i know.

Thanks

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1 Answer 1

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This sounds rather complicated to me and not the way I would try to run it.

In general I try to separate as much as I can environments from each other, running on different servers ideally , but i understand this is not something you can do with a single VPS.

You should at least separate tomcat instances, this would reduce the mess and makes everything more clear.

I would

1) Start 2 different tomcat instances ( achievable in different ways depending on which distribution you are running) on different ports , prod:8080 and test:8180

2) Enable NameVirtualHost in your Apache configuration and proxy the right servername to the right tomcat instance

# Ensure that Apache listens on port 80 Listen 80 # Listen for virtual host requests on all IP addresses NameVirtualHost *:80 <VirtualHost *:80> DocumentRoot /www/example1 ServerName www.mytestdomain.com # Other directives here ProxyPreserveHost On ProxyPass / http://localhost:8080/ ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/ </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *:80> DocumentRoot /www/example2 ServerName test.mytestdomain.com # Other directives here ProxyPreserveHost On ProxyPass / http://localhost:8180/ ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8180/ </VirtualHost>

this way your environment are completely separate and you can apply changes to test without affecting prod , not just inside your code but also at the tomcat configuration level and apache configuration level.

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  • Thanks for your answer and comments. Really helpful. But I will still look first for single instance case. That would be a learning too. Also let me try two virtual host pointing to 8080. @Whats is this DocumentRoot refer too here ? Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 16:26
  • the document root here was actually just from the example i took :) if you are proxying / then it does not really matter, i would set it to "/var/empty". For the single instance version i would try see if the problem is in tomcat or an upper layer. make sure to have "NameVirtualHost *:80" in your apache config ... tcpdump on localhost port 8080 , open the file with wireshark and see if the servername is making into tomcat or not ... and tomcat is not really my field :) Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 16:28
  • NameVirtualHost *:80" has no effect and will also be removed from next version. Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 17:22
  • but the good news is two virtual hosts things worked. I created two virtual host and ProxyPass / localhost:8080/www.mytestdomain.com and ProxyPass / localhost:8080/test.mytestdomain. And respective appbase directory in CATALINA_HOME and HOST entry in server.xml of tomcat/conf. Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 17:25

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