WAR Deployment on virtual hosts, not under webapps

[Steve <sc...@nsi-ltd.demon.co.uk>]

I am tryimg to get autodeploymenf of WAR files working for virtual hosts located outside the standard Tomcat directory structure.

I am using Tomcat 6.0.13 and running behind Apache 2.2 using mod-rewrite.  This is enabling both static and servlet content to be co-located under the same directory structure for the given virtual host.  No problems encountered there.

However, when I try an drop a WAR file into the appbase for a virtual host, nothing appears to happen.  Even though I have got <unpackWARs> and <autoDeploy> both set as true.

If I drop the same WAR file into $TOMCAT_BASE/webapps, the WAR file is expanded after a few seconds and the application directory is unpacked and available for use.  Deleting the WAR file also results in successful undeployment.

Looking into the Tomcat log file, I get two error messages.

  INFO: Deploying web application archive myWarFile.war
  Jun 10, 2007 8:37:44 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig init
  SEVERE: Exception fixing docBase: {0} 
  java.io.FileNotFoundException: /var/www/vhosts/host_appBase/myWarFile/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF (No such file or directory)
  at java.io.FileOutputStream.open(Native Method)
  at java.io.FileOutputStream.<init>(FileOutputStream.java:179)
  at java.io.FileOutputStream.<init>(FileOutputStream.java:131)
  at org.apache.catalina.startup.ExpandWar.expand(ExpandWar.java:312)
  at org.apache.catalina.startup.ExpandWar.expand(ExpandWar.java:158)
  at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.fixDocBase(ContextConfig.java:890)
  at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.init(ContextConfig.java:1008)
  at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.lifecycleEvent(ContextConfig.java:279)
  at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:117)
  at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.init(StandardContext.java:5297)
  at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:4070)
  at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:791)
  at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:771)
  at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:525)
  at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR(HostConfig.java:825)
  at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWARs(HostConfig.java:714)
  at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployApps(HostConfig.java:490)
  at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.check(HostConfig.java:1206)
  at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.lifecycleEvent(HostConfig.java:293)
  at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:117)
  at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.backgroundProcess(ContainerBase.java:1337)
  at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$ContainerBackgroundProcessor.processChildren(ContainerBase.java:1601)
  at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$ContainerBackgroundProcessor.processChildren(ContainerBase.java:1610)
  at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$ContainerBackgroundProcessor.run(ContainerBase.java:1590)
  at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:595)

Any suggesions or advice would be appreciated.