Proposed ApacheConfig tweak:Re: Bugzilla #512 is Bunk

[Mel Martinez <me...@yahoo.com>]

--- Stephen Jones <st...@qwest.net> wrote:
> 
> In httpd.conf, you cannot do this:
> 
> <VirtualHost .... blah>
>      .... normal config for VirtualHost ...
>      Include
> /usr/local/jakarta-tomcat/conf/mod_jk.conf-auto
> </VirtualHost>
> 
> There are three main purposes of including
> mod_jk.conf-auto:
> 
> (1) To get the mod_jk Apache Module loaded, as
> follows:
>       LoadModule jk_module libexec/mod_jk.so
> 
> 
> The first (1) Apache directive is the problem: the
> LoadModule directive
> is illegal within the VirtualHost context.
> (See
>
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_so.html#loadmodule
> )

Without trying to change the fact that the LoadModule
call should not be inside a virtual host definition, a
simple patch that should fix this as a side benefit
(the main benefit is improved flexibility in deploying
tomcat and apache) would be to make a simple change to
ApacheConfig.java. 

Specifically, ApacheConfig currently generates (based
on operating system type and other conditions) a line
similar to:

LoadModule jk_module modules/mod_jk.dll   or

LoadModule jk_module modules/mod_jk.so

and so on.  It should not be too difficult to modify
ApacheConfig.java to generate the following
declaration format instead:

<IfModule !mod_jk.c>
LoadModule jk_module modules/mod_jk.so
</IfModule>

This would serve two purposes.  Obviously, if the
module is already loaded, then LoadModule would not be
called. Thus, if you simply make sure to use
LoadModule to load mod_jk prior to the VirtualHost
definition, then I believe that if you include the
mod_jk.conf-auto file it should not cause a problem.
I.E. step (1) would be ignored.

The more important benefit would be to allow the
deployment engineer freedom to put the mod_jk.so (or
mod_jk.dll) module elsewhere than inside
${TOMCAT_HOME}/modules/.  Inside httpd.conf, you would
simply specify where you want to load mod_jk.so/.dll
from prior to including mod_jk.conf-auto.  

Some examples:

#...inside a solaris version of httpd.conf...
LoadModule jk_module /path/modules/solaris/mod_jk.so
Include
/usr/local/jakarta-tomcat/conf/mod_jk.conf-auto

#...while inside a linux version of httpd.conf:
LoadModule jk_module /path/modules/linux/mod_jk.so
Include
/usr/local/jakarta-tomcat/conf/mod_jk.conf-auto

and so on.  This would make it easier to deploy the
same apache/tomcat configuration from CVS to multiple
platforms since you don't have to maintain a custom
mod_jk.conf for each platform.

The same fix should be applied to the other LoadModule
calls (such as for jserv).

I will try to put some time into creating this patch
later today.  I don't think I can get it done for a
day or two though.  Too busy with other things.  I do
need this patch for my own purposes, though, so I will
definitely pursue it.

Does anybody see a problem with this proposal?

If I don't hear any nay-saying I'll proceed.  I'll
post it first as a [PATCH] as I'll need folks using
jserv to test it out as well, but this looks pretty
straight forward.


Cheers,

Mel


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