[OT] Web-initiated restarts for Tomcat 3.2.1?

[Nathan Eric Probst <pr...@pond.net>]

Hello,

I'm attempting to setup a shared development server to use with a
distributed developement team.  (All two of us!)

I want to allow my partner, who is doing the page design, graphics, and
JSP to "bounce" Tomcat remotely WITHOUT giving him an account on my
machine.

I've already written a simple buildServlet that updates the local copy
of our CVS project and builds it to the context directory
(webapps/our_project/).  I've added the admin/reload.do Action to catch
config changes.  I've set the reloadable='true' in server.xml for the
Context.  Now I need to provide the ability to "bounce" Tomcat, just in
case it reloads funny.

Does anyone know of a reliable way to do this?

I've written a simple bounceServlet that uses Runtime.exec() to call a
bounce.sh script (I'm running Linux) that does a 'tomcat -stop' and
'tomcat -start'.  The problem is that it work *sometimes*.  There is a
race between the call to 'tomcat -stop' and 'tomcat -start'.  At least,
that's my explaination.

So, does anyone have a better solution?

Nathan

Re: [OT] Web-initiated restarts for Tomcat 3.2.1?

[Maya Muchnik <mm...@pumatech.com>]

I know, that sometime you can have a problem because after Tomcat (3.1)
was stopped, you need to remove compiled versions of JSP files under
tomcat/dist/tomcat/work directory. This is needed if you change JSP.

Very good idea with admin/reload.do to catch config changes. Can you share
some details? Maybe this is good idea for Tomcat project itself.

Nathan Eric Probst wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm attempting to setup a shared development server to use with a
> distributed developement team.  (All two of us!)
>
> I want to allow my partner, who is doing the page design, graphics, and
> JSP to "bounce" Tomcat remotely WITHOUT giving him an account on my
> machine.
>
> I've already written a simple buildServlet that updates the local copy
> of our CVS project and builds it to the context directory
> (webapps/our_project/).  I've added the admin/reload.do Action to catch
> config changes.  I've set the reloadable='true' in server.xml for the
> Context.  Now I need to provide the ability to "bounce" Tomcat, just in
> case it reloads funny.
>
> Does anyone know of a reliable way to do this?
>
> I've written a simple bounceServlet that uses Runtime.exec() to call a
> bounce.sh script (I'm running Linux) that does a 'tomcat -stop' and
> 'tomcat -start'.  The problem is that it work *sometimes*.  There is a
> race between the call to 'tomcat -stop' and 'tomcat -start'.  At least,
> that's my explaination.
>
> So, does anyone have a better solution?
>
> Nathan

Re: [OT] Web-initiated restarts for Tomcat 3.2.1?

[Jens Rehpöhler <je...@rehpoehler.de>]

Hello Nathan,

> I want to allow my partner, who is doing the page design, graphics, and
> JSP to "bounce" Tomcat remotely WITHOUT giving him an account on my
> machine.
>
> I've already written a simple buildServlet that updates the local copy
> of our CVS project and builds it to the context directory
> (webapps/our_project/).  I've added the admin/reload.do Action to catch
> config changes.  I've set the reloadable='true' in server.xml for the
> Context.  Now I need to provide the ability to "bounce" Tomcat, just in
> case it reloads funny.
>
> Does anyone know of a reliable way to do this?

Here's a possible solution that worked with Tomcat 3.1:
If you made major changes in your web app you sometimes have to "restart" the
servlet context.  In the Tomcat web administration ( /admin/contextAdmin ) it is
possible to remove a servlet context and to add new servlet contexts. If your
application is the only one that runs on the Tomcat server the easiest way would
be to give your designer a login and he can remove and add your servlet context
again (this has no effect on your server.xml). If there are other applications
on your server, I would suggest to write your on servlet-context-restart-servlet
(should be very easy by looking at the sources from the admin web app of
Tomcat).

Jens