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Posted to users@tomcat.apache.org by Ingo Gambin <IG...@brilliant.de> on 2009/12/15 14:46:56 UTC
Trying to access a directory outside docBase... is it possible ?
Hi,
I am new to Tomcat and JEE, but a new job means to learn new things.
So right to my problem, wich I am sure is not too unusual, but I
couldn't really find a solution (via google) so far.
my directory structure looks as follows
/opt/document-repository <- mounted nfs-disk of an archiving system
/opt/Tomcat/webapps/myApp.war <- my project deployment file
my webapp for now is just a bunch of servlets which, using
java.io.File..., have no trouble to read the archiving systems directory
structure listing to list all available archived pdf-files. With
servlets and some CSS I managed to build a little directory tree in the
browser output and linked the pdf-files to get opened (via adobe reader
plugin) in an iframe
this basically works if the pdf-files I want to open are located in the
deployment directory.
but what I want to do is to access the pdf-files of the archiving disk.
it seems tho while the servlet java code {java.io...} CAN, tomcat CANNOT
access the pdf-files, which are stored there. And my projects deployment
directory and the archiving systems mount have to be separated, so I can
not mount the nfs into the deployment directory nor can I put my
application around the nfs-mount-directory
I stumbled over a hint about adding a
<Context docBase="/opt/documents" path="/documents"/>
directive to the web.xml file, but I haven't had any luck with my
experiments so far, but then I realized that this would mean that I also
have to move my project directory which I can't.
So if there is any possibility to get this done (i am using linux incase
you haven't guessed already) I would be very glad if anyone could drop a
few lines to help me out.
Thanks in advance!
Ingo Gambin
Brilliant Vorsorge GmbH
Worringer Str. 2-4
D-40211 Düsseldorf
Telefon: +49 (0) 211 / 61793-0
Mobil: +49 (0) 176 / 44 66 66 42
eMail: IGambin@brilliant.de
PGP-Fingerprint: D316 7343 EA4B 82C7 D96D 6917 3BF3 005A DA46 227F
Re: Trying to access a directory outside docBase... is it possible ?
Posted by Paolo Santarsiero <pa...@gmail.com>.
2009/12/15 Ingo Gambin <IG...@brilliant.de>
> Hi,
>
> I am new to Tomcat and JEE, but a new job means to learn new things.
>
> So right to my problem, wich I am sure is not too unusual, but I
> couldn't really find a solution (via google) so far.
>
> my directory structure looks as follows
>
> /opt/document-repository <- mounted nfs-disk of an archiving system
>
> /opt/Tomcat/webapps/myApp.war <- my project deployment file
>
> my webapp for now is just a bunch of servlets which, using
> java.io.File..., have no trouble to read the archiving systems directory
> structure listing to list all available archived pdf-files. With
> servlets and some CSS I managed to build a little directory tree in the
> browser output and linked the pdf-files to get opened (via adobe reader
> plugin) in an iframe
>
> this basically works if the pdf-files I want to open are located in the
> deployment directory.
>
> but what I want to do is to access the pdf-files of the archiving disk.
> it seems tho while the servlet java code {java.io...} CAN, tomcat CANNOT
> access the pdf-files, which are stored there. And my projects deployment
> directory and the archiving systems mount have to be separated, so I can
> not mount the nfs into the deployment directory nor can I put my
> application around the nfs-mount-directory
>
> I stumbled over a hint about adding a
>
> <Context docBase="/opt/documents" path="/documents"/>
>
>
> directive to the web.xml file, but I haven't had any luck with my
> experiments so far, but then I realized that this would mean that I also
> have to move my project directory which I can't.
>
> So if there is any possibility to get this done (i am using linux incase
> you haven't guessed already) I would be very glad if anyone could drop a
> few lines to help me out.
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
>
> Ingo Gambin
>
> Brilliant Vorsorge GmbH
> Worringer Str. 2-4
> D-40211 Düsseldorf
>
> Telefon: +49 (0) 211 / 61793-0
> Mobil: +49 (0) 176 / 44 66 66 42
> eMail: IGambin@brilliant.de
> PGP-Fingerprint: D316 7343 EA4B 82C7 D96D 6917 3BF3 005A DA46 227F
>
>
>
> <Context docBase="/opt/documents" path="/documents"/>
>
You must create documents.xml in conf/Catalina/localhost/ and put there this
directive, not in web.xml
Re: Trying to access a directory outside docBase... is possible !
Posted by Ingo Gambin <IG...@brilliant.de>.
Hi,
thanks a lot!
Using the 'deprecated' way of putting the '<Context docBase...>'
directive to server.xml worked whereas trying to put it into
documents.xml in the localhost directory did not (using Tomcat 5.5).
I am using an extra servlet for the viewer because I dont want to reload
the whole page but still want to set my session variables to the values
sent via the link (file=... page=...), which I can easily do in the
viewer servlet.
Thanks again for all the ideas and information, I think I did learn
a few things by your responses... especially the 'symbolic link'-hint as
I was about to try that first thing this morning, good I read mails
first.
Best regards and CU when I encounter my next problem:-)
Ingo
Am Dienstag, den 15.12.2009, 13:44 -0500 schrieb Christopher Schultz:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Peter,
>
> On 12/15/2009 11:05 AM, Peter Crowther wrote:
> > If you're going to do this, be Very Very Careful. Tomcat doesn't follow
> > symbolic links by default, even on UNIX. This is for a very good reason: if
> > you do this, Tomcat *will* follow the symlink and delete your PDFs when you
> > undeploy your webapp.
> >
> > You probably don't want this to happen.
>
> +1 :)
>
> > This is a common enough use case (it comes up about once a month on the
> > list) that Someone may have coded a quick "serve the content from this
> > directory" servlet, probably based on the root webapp. Chris? You're
> > generally the coder with quick hacks already developed...
>
> Uh, file-serving code is pretty simple: set the Content-Type and
> Content-Length headers, open the file, deliver the bytes.
>
> It's so popular that it's already been written and even ships with
> Tomcat: it's called the DefaultServlet :)
>
> Seriously, though, Ingo was very close to a working solution:
>
> > I stumbled over a hint about adding a
> >
> > <Context docBase="/opt/documents" path="/documents"/>
> >
> > directive to the web.xml file
>
> Ohh! So close! That should be added to conf/server.xml (but not really,
> since that's no longer recommended). Let's do it the right way:
>
> Put this into conf/Catalina/localhost/document-repository.xml:
>
> <Context docBase="/opt/document-repository" path="/documents" />
>
> I think you might have to restart Tomcat for it to pick up that config
> file, but it will create a new webapp context that serves files directly
> from that location. Your URLs will no longer look like this:
>
> http://localhost:8080/myApp/PDFViewer?file=document-repository/Folder%202/TestDok4.pdf&page=1
>
> Instead, they can look just like this:
>
> /documents/Folder%202/TestDok4.pdf&page=1
>
> You can even get rid of your PDFViewer servlet, because it's probably
> just serving bytes and not doing anything particularly exciting.
>
> - -chris
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Re: Trying to access a directory outside docBase... is it possible
?
Posted by Christopher Schultz <ch...@christopherschultz.net>.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Peter,
On 12/15/2009 11:05 AM, Peter Crowther wrote:
> If you're going to do this, be Very Very Careful. Tomcat doesn't follow
> symbolic links by default, even on UNIX. This is for a very good reason: if
> you do this, Tomcat *will* follow the symlink and delete your PDFs when you
> undeploy your webapp.
>
> You probably don't want this to happen.
+1 :)
> This is a common enough use case (it comes up about once a month on the
> list) that Someone may have coded a quick "serve the content from this
> directory" servlet, probably based on the root webapp. Chris? You're
> generally the coder with quick hacks already developed...
Uh, file-serving code is pretty simple: set the Content-Type and
Content-Length headers, open the file, deliver the bytes.
It's so popular that it's already been written and even ships with
Tomcat: it's called the DefaultServlet :)
Seriously, though, Ingo was very close to a working solution:
> I stumbled over a hint about adding a
>
> <Context docBase="/opt/documents" path="/documents"/>
>
> directive to the web.xml file
Ohh! So close! That should be added to conf/server.xml (but not really,
since that's no longer recommended). Let's do it the right way:
Put this into conf/Catalina/localhost/document-repository.xml:
<Context docBase="/opt/document-repository" path="/documents" />
I think you might have to restart Tomcat for it to pick up that config
file, but it will create a new webapp context that serves files directly
from that location. Your URLs will no longer look like this:
http://localhost:8080/myApp/PDFViewer?file=document-repository/Folder%202/TestDok4.pdf&page=1
Instead, they can look just like this:
/documents/Folder%202/TestDok4.pdf&page=1
You can even get rid of your PDFViewer servlet, because it's probably
just serving bytes and not doing anything particularly exciting.
- -chris
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
iEYEARECAAYFAksn2SsACgkQ9CaO5/Lv0PDlQACglU4lGn9398YVUBpjMGtbJP2X
beoAn1zI4YyBJe9sr2MYZOSdlyCqXi3o
=RPfr
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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RE: Trying to access a directory outside docBase... is it possible
?
Posted by "Caldarale, Charles R" <Ch...@unisys.com>.
> From: peter.crowther3@googlemail.com
> [mailto:peter.crowther3@googlemail.com] On Behalf Of Peter Crowther
> Subject: Re: Trying to access a directory outside docBase... is it
> possible ?
>
> This is a common enough use case (it comes up about once a month on the
> list) that Someone may have coded a quick "serve the content from this
> directory" servlet, probably based on the root webapp.
A special servlet is not required - Tomcat's default servlet will do the job. Paolo already gave the correct answer, which is to set up a <Context> element for a dummy webapp:
> > <Context docBase="/opt/documents" path="/documents"/>
>
> You must create documents.xml in conf/Catalina/localhost/ and put there this
> directive, not in web.xml
Although the path attribute must not be used - just the docBase.
- Chuck
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Re: Trying to access a directory outside docBase... is it possible
?
Posted by André Warnier <aw...@ice-sa.com>.
Pid wrote:
> On 15/12/2009 16:05, Peter Crowther wrote:
>> 2009/12/15 André Warnier<aw...@ice-sa.com>
>>
>>> But maybe you could just create a link, inside your deployment
>>> directory,
>>> to the mount ?
>>>
>>> /opt/Tomcat/webapps/myApp/docs --> /opt/document-repository
>>>
>>> If you're going to do this, be Very Very Careful. Tomcat doesn't follow
>> symbolic links by default, even on UNIX. This is for a very good
>> reason: if
>> you do this, Tomcat *will* follow the symlink and delete your PDFs
>> when you
>> undeploy your webapp.
Ooops.
(Although I did specify read access for the Tomcat user-id. If it does
not have write access to the directory pointed to, it should not be able
to delete the files, right ?)
>>
>> You probably don't want this to happen.
>>
>> This is a common enough use case (it comes up about once a month on the
>> list) that Someone may have coded a quick "serve the content from this
>> directory" servlet, probably based on the root webapp. Chris? You're
>> generally the coder with quick hacks already developed...
>
> The OP already has a servlet AFAICT. It's just not working.
>
I think indeed the OP has some kind of servlet, and that one works.
But I understood that he wanted Tomcat to serve these documents
directly, as files, not going through a servlet.
Maybe I got that wrong.
OP ?
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Re: Trying to access a directory outside docBase... is it possible
?
Posted by Pid <pi...@pidster.com>.
On 15/12/2009 16:05, Peter Crowther wrote:
> 2009/12/15 André Warnier<aw...@ice-sa.com>
>
>> But maybe you could just create a link, inside your deployment directory,
>> to the mount ?
>>
>> /opt/Tomcat/webapps/myApp/docs --> /opt/document-repository
>>
>> If you're going to do this, be Very Very Careful. Tomcat doesn't follow
> symbolic links by default, even on UNIX. This is for a very good reason: if
> you do this, Tomcat *will* follow the symlink and delete your PDFs when you
> undeploy your webapp.
>
> You probably don't want this to happen.
>
> This is a common enough use case (it comes up about once a month on the
> list) that Someone may have coded a quick "serve the content from this
> directory" servlet, probably based on the root webapp. Chris? You're
> generally the coder with quick hacks already developed...
The OP already has a servlet AFAICT. It's just not working.
p
> - Peter
>
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Re: Trying to access a directory outside docBase... is it possible ?
Posted by Peter Crowther <pe...@melandra.com>.
2009/12/15 André Warnier <aw...@ice-sa.com>
> But maybe you could just create a link, inside your deployment directory,
> to the mount ?
>
> /opt/Tomcat/webapps/myApp/docs --> /opt/document-repository
>
> If you're going to do this, be Very Very Careful. Tomcat doesn't follow
symbolic links by default, even on UNIX. This is for a very good reason: if
you do this, Tomcat *will* follow the symlink and delete your PDFs when you
undeploy your webapp.
You probably don't want this to happen.
This is a common enough use case (it comes up about once a month on the
list) that Someone may have coded a quick "serve the content from this
directory" servlet, probably based on the root webapp. Chris? You're
generally the coder with quick hacks already developed...
- Peter
Re: Trying to access a directory outside docBase... is it possible
?
Posted by André Warnier <aw...@ice-sa.com>.
Ingo Gambin wrote:
...
>
> my directory structure looks as follows
>
> /opt/document-repository <- mounted nfs-disk of an archiving system
>
> /opt/Tomcat/webapps/myApp.war <- my project deployment file
>
> my webapp for now is just a bunch of servlets which, using
> java.io.File..., have no trouble to read the archiving systems directory
> structure listing to list all available archived pdf-files. With
> servlets and some CSS I managed to build a little directory tree in the
> browser output and linked the pdf-files to get opened (via adobe reader
> plugin) in an iframe
>
> this basically works if the pdf-files I want to open are located in the
> deployment directory.
>
> but what I want to do is to access the pdf-files of the archiving disk.
> it seems tho while the servlet java code {java.io...} CAN, tomcat CANNOT
> access the pdf-files, which are stored there. And my projects deployment
> directory and the archiving systems mount have to be separated, so I can
> not mount the nfs into the deployment directory nor can I put my
> application around the nfs-mount-directory
But maybe you could just create a link, inside your deployment
directory, to the mount ?
/opt/Tomcat/webapps/myApp/docs --> /opt/document-repository
You would have to make sure that the user-id under which Tomcat runs has
read access to that directory and to the documents in it.
Otherwise, can you be more precise when you say that "tomcat CANNOT
access the files" ? what URL is the client using, and what exactly happens ?
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Re: Trying to access a directory outside docBase... is it possible
?
Posted by Pid <pi...@pidster.com>.
On 15/12/2009 15:25, Ingo Gambin wrote:
> Am Dienstag, den 15.12.2009, 15:01 +0000 schrieb Pid:
>> o right to my problem, wich I am sure is not too unusual, but I
>>> couldn't really find a solution (via google) so far.
>>>
>>> my directory structure looks as follows
>>>
>>> /opt/document-repository<- mounted nfs-disk of an archiving system
>>>
>>> /opt/Tomcat/webapps/myApp.war<- my project deployment file
>>>
>>> my webapp for now is just a bunch of servlets which, using
>>> java.io.File..., have no trouble to read the archiving systems
>> directory
>>> structure listing to list all available archived pdf-files. With
>>> servlets and some CSS I managed to build a little directory tree in
>> the
>>> browser output and linked the pdf-files to get opened (via adobe
>> reader
>>> plugin) in an iframe
>>>
>>> this basically works if the pdf-files I want to open are located in
>> the
>>> deployment directory.
>>>
>>> but what I want to do is to access the pdf-files of the archiving
>> disk.
>>> it seems tho while the servlet java code {java.io...} CAN, tomcat
>> CANNOT
>>> access the pdf-files, which are stored there. And my projects
>> deployment
>>> directory and the archiving systems mount have to be separated, so I
>> can
>>> not mount the nfs into the deployment directory nor can I put my
>>> application around the nfs-mount-directory
>>>
>>> I stumbled over a hint about adding a
>>>
>>> <Context docBase="/opt/documents" path="/documents"/>
>>>
>>> directive to the web.xml file, but I haven't had any luck with my
>>> experiments so far, but then I realized that this would mean that I
>> also
>>> have to move my project directory which I can't.
>>>
>>> So if there is any possibility to get this done (i am using linux
>> incase
>>> you haven't guessed already) I would be very glad if anyone could
>> drop a
>>> few lines to help me out.
>>
>> What actually happens when you try to access the files?
>> Does the Tomcat process have sufficient rights to access that
>> directory?
>>
>>
>
> http://localhost:8080/myApp/PDFClient<- entry servlet and main form
> http://localhost:8080/myApp/PDFViewer<- servlet loaded in IFrame
<snip>
So what do your app logs say?
If the viewer servlet isn't working where does it throw it's errors?
p
> Thx for the quick answer!
>
> Ingo
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Re: Trying to access a directory outside docBase... is it possible ?
Posted by Ingo Gambin <IG...@brilliant.de>.
Am Dienstag, den 15.12.2009, 15:01 +0000 schrieb Pid:
> o right to my problem, wich I am sure is not too unusual, but I
> > couldn't really find a solution (via google) so far.
> >
> > my directory structure looks as follows
> >
> > /opt/document-repository<- mounted nfs-disk of an archiving system
> >
> > /opt/Tomcat/webapps/myApp.war<- my project deployment file
> >
> > my webapp for now is just a bunch of servlets which, using
> > java.io.File..., have no trouble to read the archiving systems
> directory
> > structure listing to list all available archived pdf-files. With
> > servlets and some CSS I managed to build a little directory tree in
> the
> > browser output and linked the pdf-files to get opened (via adobe
> reader
> > plugin) in an iframe
> >
> > this basically works if the pdf-files I want to open are located in
> the
> > deployment directory.
> >
> > but what I want to do is to access the pdf-files of the archiving
> disk.
> > it seems tho while the servlet java code {java.io...} CAN, tomcat
> CANNOT
> > access the pdf-files, which are stored there. And my projects
> deployment
> > directory and the archiving systems mount have to be separated, so I
> can
> > not mount the nfs into the deployment directory nor can I put my
> > application around the nfs-mount-directory
> >
> > I stumbled over a hint about adding a
> >
> > <Context docBase="/opt/documents" path="/documents"/>
> >
> > directive to the web.xml file, but I haven't had any luck with my
> > experiments so far, but then I realized that this would mean that I
> also
> > have to move my project directory which I can't.
> >
> > So if there is any possibility to get this done (i am using linux
> incase
> > you haven't guessed already) I would be very glad if anyone could
> drop a
> > few lines to help me out.
>
> What actually happens when you try to access the files?
> Does the Tomcat process have sufficient rights to access that
> directory?
>
>
http://localhost:8080/myApp/PDFClient <- entry servlet and main form
http://localhost:8080/myApp/PDFViewer <- servlet loaded in IFrame
ok when I click on a linked PDF
e. g.
<a
href="http://localhost:8080/myApp/PDFViewer?file=document-repository/Folder%202/TestDok4.pdf&page=1" target="viewer-iframe">filename</a>
in the PDFClient the PDFViewer should be loaded in the IFrame, which
actually is a blank page that just embeds the PDF-File
...process request-parameters and session-vars...
if(pdfFile!=null) {
output = "<embed src=\""+pdfFile+"#page="+pdfPage
+"&toolbar=0&navpanes=0&scrollbar=0&view=Fit\" width=
\"550\" height=\"550\">";
}
When I call the Viewer with a file 'TestDok1.pdf' which is located in
the 'war' file (main directory of the project), it works well, when a
pdf-file from a location outside the project directory the generated
html looks like it should:
<html>
<head>
<title>PDFViewer</title>
</head>
<body>
<embed src="document-repository/TestDok1.pdf#page=1&toolbar=0&navpanes=0&scrollbar=0&view=Fit" width="550" height="550">
</body>
</html>
but instead of opening the PDF-File the plugin opens nothing... well at
least it reserves the 550x550 pixels for the presentation but all is white
nothing is displayed
/opt and recursively all contents have rwxrwxrwx... so I would think
the access rights should not be the problem...
Thx for the quick answer!
Ingo
Re: Trying to access a directory outside docBase... is it possible
?
Posted by Pid <pi...@pidster.com>.
On 15/12/2009 13:46, Ingo Gambin wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am new to Tomcat and JEE, but a new job means to learn new things.
>
> So right to my problem, wich I am sure is not too unusual, but I
> couldn't really find a solution (via google) so far.
>
> my directory structure looks as follows
>
> /opt/document-repository<- mounted nfs-disk of an archiving system
>
> /opt/Tomcat/webapps/myApp.war<- my project deployment file
>
> my webapp for now is just a bunch of servlets which, using
> java.io.File..., have no trouble to read the archiving systems directory
> structure listing to list all available archived pdf-files. With
> servlets and some CSS I managed to build a little directory tree in the
> browser output and linked the pdf-files to get opened (via adobe reader
> plugin) in an iframe
>
> this basically works if the pdf-files I want to open are located in the
> deployment directory.
>
> but what I want to do is to access the pdf-files of the archiving disk.
> it seems tho while the servlet java code {java.io...} CAN, tomcat CANNOT
> access the pdf-files, which are stored there. And my projects deployment
> directory and the archiving systems mount have to be separated, so I can
> not mount the nfs into the deployment directory nor can I put my
> application around the nfs-mount-directory
>
> I stumbled over a hint about adding a
>
> <Context docBase="/opt/documents" path="/documents"/>
>
> directive to the web.xml file, but I haven't had any luck with my
> experiments so far, but then I realized that this would mean that I also
> have to move my project directory which I can't.
>
> So if there is any possibility to get this done (i am using linux incase
> you haven't guessed already) I would be very glad if anyone could drop a
> few lines to help me out.
What actually happens when you try to access the files?
Does the Tomcat process have sufficient rights to access that directory?
p
> Thanks in advance!
>
>
> Ingo Gambin
>
> Brilliant Vorsorge GmbH
> Worringer Str. 2-4
> D-40211 Düsseldorf
>
> Telefon: +49 (0) 211 / 61793-0
> Mobil: +49 (0) 176 / 44 66 66 42
> eMail: IGambin@brilliant.de
> PGP-Fingerprint: D316 7343 EA4B 82C7 D96D 6917 3BF3 005A DA46 227F
>
>
>
>
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