Allowing users to set their own servlets up.

[Chuck Cochems <za...@tdl.com>]

I work for an ISP, which has many virtual customers.  We make a point of
letting people set up their own stuff whenever possible.  So I want to
know this. Is there a way to configure Tomcat and Apache such that all
virtualhosts have their own webapps directory, so end users can set up
jsp and servlets with no sysadmin intervention?

RE: Allowing users to set their own servlets up.

[Deacon Marcus <de...@wwtech.pl>]

Hi,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chuck Cochems [mailto:zaphod@tdl.com]
>
> I work for an ISP, which has many virtual customers.  We make a point of

Same situation here, except we use Tomcat stand-alone.

> letting people set up their own stuff whenever possible.  So I want to
> know this. Is there a way to configure Tomcat and Apache such that all
> virtualhosts have their own webapps directory, so end users can set up

AFAIK, vhost _have_ to have its own webapp dir.

Here's a piece of our server.xml

      <Host name="k-12.pl : www.k-12.pl" debug="0"
appBase="/server/domains/k-12.pl/http" unpackWARs="true">
        <Context path="" docBase="/server/domains/k-12.pl/http" debug="0"/>
      </Host>

I'm not sure if specifing both Host/appBase and Context/docBase is needed,
but it works and I don't like to mess with success.

> jsp and servlets with no sysadmin intervention?

Having multiple vhosts like this, it should be no problem. But, servlet
reloading is something which - even if implemented bug-free - should be
avoided for a zillion different reasons, also, there's no way to dynamically
reload web.xml. So, there should be an option to restart server in specified
intervals, 72 hours for example. I'm thinking about implementing an option
in user's control pages to mark his/her webapp as "dirty", which if marked
would cause the server to restart 3:00 am next day. As for fully automatic
version, try setting cron or something to stop and start immidiately.

Greetings, deacon Marcus