Running more than one application

[Peter Flynn <pf...@ucc.ie>]

I have been running Cocoon 2.1.11 successfully on its own for some time 
in Tomcat 5.5.23 under RHEL5 with Apache httpd 2.2.3 but I now need to 
add Lucene and some other apps.

The cocoon.war was unwrapped in webapps, and the only installation mods 
I made were to add the virtual host block to Apache's httpd.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
     DocumentRoot /var/www/xml
     ProxyPreserveHost On
     ProxyPass / ajp://localhost:8009/cocoon/
     ProxyPassReverse / ajp://localhost:8009/cocoon/
     ServerName my.server.name
</VirtualHost>

and modified the sample Host element to match in server.xml

<Host name="my.server.name" appBase="webapps"
       unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"
       xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false">
   <Context path="" docBase="/var/www/xml/"
            debug="9" crossContext="true"/>
   <Context path="/" docBase="/var/www/xml/"
            debug="9" crossContext="true"/>
...

(This may be suboptimal /var/www/xml/ is where my XML/XSLT files are, 
but it's unclear to me if this is actually needed at this level of the 
config.)

This worked fine to test what I am doing in Cocoon, although the server 
sticks in an unwanted /cocoon/ into the URI.  Now I need to add Lucene 
and several other apps (via .war files) but I am having difficulty 
understanding how to configure Tomcat to use multiple apps.

As far as I understand it:

a) I need to make Cocoon the default app, because that's what the bulk 
of the work will run through (but I'm happy to be told this is wrong). 
Comments in the mailing lists indicate that this will also get rid of 
the intrusive /cocoon in the URIs.

b) I then add the other apps in servlet-mappings in web.xml

I deleted the ROOT directory in webapps; renamed the cocoon directory to 
ROOT; removed the /cocoon from the httpd.conf; and added this to web.xml 
(and restarted tomcat5 and httpd)

<servlet-mapping>
   <servlet-name>Cocoon</servlet-name>
   <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

But accessing any URI using the virtual hostname then brought up the 
Tomcat 404 error "requested resource (/what/ever) is not available.

I have obviously misunderstood something vital here, but the docs don't 
seem to address this particular configuration, and my knowledge of Java 
isn't sufficient to dig into the innards of Tomcat.

///Peter

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Re: Running more than one application

[Christopher Schultz <ch...@christopherschultz.net>]

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Peter,

On 2/16/2009 10:29 AM, Peter Flynn wrote:
> and modified the sample Host element to match in server.xml
> 
> <Host name="my.server.name" appBase="webapps"
>       unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"
>       xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false">
>   <Context path="" docBase="/var/www/xml/"
>            debug="9" crossContext="true"/>
>   <Context path="/" docBase="/var/www/xml/"
>            debug="9" crossContext="true"/>

Yuk:

#1 <Context> elements are best left in META-INF/context.xml files within
each application's WAR file (or exploded WAR file).

#2 <Context> elements should not set their paths (except in server.xml;
please see #1)

#3 <Context> elements should never set the path to "/", as this is
confusing to the reader and, I suspect, impossible to reach once
started. Tomcat uses <Context path=""> for the "root" web application.
<Context path="/"> doesn't make any sense.

#4 You are deploying the same application (/var/www/xml) twice. It
doesn't sound like this is really what you want to do.

#5 It looks like you are trying to deploy the same application twice to
the ROOT context (see #3 and #4).

Please see http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/config/context.html

> (This may be suboptimal /var/www/xml/ is where my XML/XSLT files are,
> but it's unclear to me if this is actually needed at this level of the
> config.)
> 
> This worked fine to test what I am doing in Cocoon, although the server
> sticks in an unwanted /cocoon/ into the URI.  Now I need to add Lucene
> and several other apps (via .war files) but I am having difficulty
> understanding how to configure Tomcat to use multiple apps.

Let's take it one step at a time. Do you have a WAR file you are trying
to deploy, or is everything in /var/www/xml?

> As far as I understand it:
> 
> a) I need to make Cocoon the default app, because that's what the bulk
> of the work will run through (but I'm happy to be told this is wrong).
> Comments in the mailing lists indicate that this will also get rid of
> the intrusive /cocoon in the URIs.

The "default app" is really a vague term. If you mean that the web
application hosting Cocoon should get requests to http://host/, then
that is called the "ROOT web application". The ROOT webapp also gets all
requests that don't get mapped to some other webapp, too (such as
http://host/webappB/foo/bar when "webappB" doesn't map to a running webapp).

> b) I then add the other apps in servlet-mappings in web.xml

Application != servlet. web.xml declares and maps servlets. If you truly
have a separate application, you should have a separate WAR file or a
separate directory with all your webapp stuff.

> [stop][rewind][play]
> The cocoon.war was unwrapped in webapps
> [stop][fast-forward][play]
>
> I deleted the ROOT directory in webapps; renamed the cocoon directory to
> ROOT; removed the /cocoon from the httpd.conf

This is exactly what you should have done. cocoon.war will be deployed
to /cocoon. Re-naming it to ROOT.war will deploy it to "/".

> and added this to web.xml
> (and restarted tomcat5 and httpd)
> 
> <servlet-mapping>
>   <servlet-name>Cocoon</servlet-name>
>   <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
> </servlet-mapping>

I believe Cocoon's configuration already maps Cocoon to all incoming
URLs. This shouldn't have been necessary.

> But accessing any URI using the virtual hostname then brought up the
> Tomcat 404 error "requested resource (/what/ever) is not available.

Do this:
* Stop Tomcat if it's running
* Remove all <Context> elements from your server.xml file.
* Leave cocoon.war exploded into webapps/ROOT
* Remove everything else from the webapps directory (maybe move
  everything somewhere else in case you need it back)
* Delete everything in work/ and logs/
* Start Tomcat
* Check all logs in logs/*
* Come back and tell us how things went

- -chris
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