possible error in virtual hosts / context name clashes?

[Michael McElligott <mi...@liquidplanet.com>]

Okay, I'm just starting to investigate this one, and I have a non-standard configuration (I'm only using Tomcat right now - Apache isn't running), but here is my problem.

When I set up multiple hosts in Catalina, using the following in my server.xml:

  <Host name="my.domain1.com">
   <Context path="" docBase="c:\_projects\sites\domain1.com" debug="0" reloadable="false"/>
  </Host>

  <Host name="my.domain2.com">
   <Context path="" docBase="c:\_projects\sites\domain2.com" debug="0" reloadable="false">
        <Parameter name="user" value="sa"/>
        <Parameter name="password" value=""/>
   </Context>
  </Host>

Domain 2 gets a 503 error when an attempt to access it is made via the url http://my.domain2.com (which has also been set up in my hosts file to point at 127.0.0.1).  This occurs regardless of the order of definition.  ALSO, the "" context path of the default host is unavailable.  It *seems* like you can't have two contexts named the same thing, even if they are in different hosts.  This is a) a bug or b) an deficiency in my configuration.  Domain 2 does *not* get an error with an access attempt if I comment out domain1.  However, the "" context of the default host is still unavailable (error 503).

I checked the log files based on something Craig said about 503 errors usually being an initialization problem, and I found the following:

2001-04-05 05:33:37 StandardContext[]: Error initializing naming context for context 
2001-04-05 05:33:37 StandardContext[]: Context startup failed due to previous errors

So I'm wondering if Tomcat relies on Apache somehow for resolving hosts + contexts?  Or should I be able to operate Tomcat standalone and access vhosts?  If it's the latter, how do I configure things correctly?

TIA,

Mike