Page History

...

...

Domains and /etc/hosts

This is an overview of the the multisite setup:

...

...

Make sure your Apache has the modules following module modules mod_proxy and proxy_ajp_module enabled.

...

On a different OS, the path and suffix of the module modules may be different.   If you edit the file, you must restart Apache.

...

We use virtual hosts configuration in this setup. You must make Make sure vhosts are enabled. Check the  /etc/apache2/httpd.conf file and make sure ensure the line with the include directive is not commented:

...

If you edit the file, you must restart Apache.

Define virtual hosts

We want to redirect requests from <distinct-domain> to localhost:<port> for at least one instance.

If vhosts is properly enabled, edit the /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf file and add something similar to this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName author.best-comics.net
#    ProxyPass / http://localhost:8080/
#    ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/
	ProxyPass / ajp://localhost:8009/
    ProxyPassReverse / ajp://localhost:8009/

    ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/projekt.local-error_log"
    CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/projekt.local-access_log" common    
</VirtualHost>

Using ajp

See lines 3, 4 above which are commented: At first sight one may think that these ProxyPass rules should be sufficient. However,

...

they're not. Some things will work, but especially the multisite setup won't do what we

...

expect .

Since we use ajp - the ajp connector must be configured in the Tomcat server.xml - which is the case in the default server.xml which is provided by a Magnolia bundle.

...

In the server.xml of your Tomcat you should find an entry as this:

<Connector port="8009" enableLookups="false" redirectPort="8443" protocol="AJP/1.3" /> 

This is the connector to which apache will redirect to.

Redirecting to Tomcat root

The apache redirect points to the Tomcat root context (see lines 5, 6 in the excerpt from httpd-vhosts.conf shown above).

Redirecting to ajp://localhost:8009/magnoliaAuthor - would work, but again, only partially. (Try it out, if you want to have fun.) Web resources would This configuration redirects the "author domain" author.best-comics.net to localhost:8080/magnoliaAuthor. The redirection works correctly, however, Tomcat still serves the pages from the context. Web resources do not load and redirections done by Magnolia are would be incorrect.

Try it out when you have completed all the steps above. You can access the login page. Looking at the source of the login page, you see that the paths to web resources start with /magnoliaAuthor. Logging in also fails since you are redirected to n incorrect path.

Tomcat adjustments to serve one context from root

So, since the apache redirect points to the Tomcat root context, we must make sure that the webapp magnoliaAuthor is served from the root context. This needs a few modifications on Tomcat (see below).

Tomcat adjustments to serve one context from root

I guess there are different possible solutions to serve a Magnolia instance from Tomcat root context. Here comes one:

Use the <Context> directive which allows to define the path of a webapp.

<Context path="" docBase="magnoliaAuthor" />

The empty string ("") as value of the path attribute ensures to serve the webapp magnoliaAuthor from the root contextWe want to serve one instance from root to make sure the HTTP response body coming from Tomcat does not contain the context in the path.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Server port="8005" shutdown="SHUTDOWN">
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.startup.VersionLoggerListener" />
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener" SSLEngine="on" />
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.JreMemoryLeakPreventionListener" />
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.GlobalResourcesLifecycleListener" />
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.ThreadLocalLeakPreventionListener" />


  <GlobalNamingResources>
    <Resource name="UserDatabase" auth="Container"
              type="org.apache.catalina.UserDatabase"
              description="User database that can be updated and saved"
              factory="org.apache.catalina.users.MemoryUserDatabaseFactory"
              pathname="conf/tomcat-users.xml" />
  </GlobalNamingResources>


  <Service name="Catalina">

    <Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
               connectionTimeout="20000"
               redirectPort="8443" />


	<Connector port="8009" enableLookups="false" redirectPort="8443" protocol="AJP/1.3" />

    <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost">

      <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm">
        <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm"
               resourceName="UserDatabase"/>
      </Realm>

      <Host name="localhost"  appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true">
		<!-- serverserve authormagnoliaAuthor from root -->  
		<Context path="" docBase="magnoliaAuthor" />
    
	    <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" 
			directory="logs" 
			prefix="localhost_access_log" 
			suffix=".txt" pattern="%h %l %u %t &quot;%r&quot; %s %b" />
      </Host>
	  
    </Engine>
	
  </Service>
  
</Server>

Tomcat can serve only one webapp from root within the same

...

host and within the same service.

It works. The same can be done with the context magnoliaPublic instead of magnoliaAuthor.

However, since now we have only one context served from root. 

Usage in a production environment

...

Serve both contexts from root

Serve both contexts from root from localhost

The following, extended setup allows to run and access both Magnolia instances from one Tomcat instance. 

 Once again, this is a not required setup for productive environments, but it works fine on a local development machine.

These is the demanded setupNow we expand the setup above to make sure we can access the Magnolia instances with the following domains:

Keep in mind that we already have defined redirects to localhost  for these three domains  (in the /etc/hosts file).

Virtual hosts configuration

We add two more In summary we need three virtual hosts to on Apache . Here is the - here is the modified httpd-vhosts.conf with three one virtual hosts, one host for the author instance and two for the public instanceinstances:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName author.best-comics.net

    	ProxyPass / httpajp://localhost:80808009/
    ProxyPassReverse / httpajp://localhost:80808009/
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName www.best-comics.net

    	ProxyPass / httpajp://localhost:80818010/
    ProxyPassReverse / httpajp://localhost:80818010/
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName www.best-vinyl.net

    
	ProxyPass / httpajp://localhost:80818010/
    ProxyPassReverse / httpajp://localhost:80818010/
</VirtualHost>

...

• Lines

...

• 3-4: author.best-comics.net redirects to localhost on port 8080
  => author instance
• Lines 9-10, 15-16:

• www.best-comics.net and www.best-vinyl.net are redirected to localhost

...

• on port 8081
  => public instance
• The lines configuring the log files of the virtual

...

• hosts have been removed to keep this configuration excerpt small.

Tomcat adjustments

As mentioned above, one Tomcat host cannot serve two contexts from root. 

We achieve this by the the following:

• Define two <Service> sections in the server.xml.
• Each <Service>:
  
  • Has  <Connector>s with distinct ports.
    • AJP connector
    • HTTP connector *
  • Serves from its own webapps directory.
  • Defines one host which wraps exactly one context to be served from root.

*) Actually the AJP connector would be sufficient to use tomcat via apache. However, if you also keep the HTTP connector, you can access tomcat also directly. And we also will use the HTTP connector for JCR activations from author to public context

Tomcat adjustments

As mentioned above, one Tomcat host cannot serve two contexts from root. 

One solution is to have two running Tomcats, however, starting and stoping may be a bit time-consuming.

Instead, we can do the following:

...

.

webapps directory

We assume that the bundle has already been started once and that both webapps have been properly installed.

...

• Create the folder webapps2.
• Move the webapp magnoliaPublic to webapps2.

...

• You may want delete the webapp ROOT, you won't be able to access it anymore.

server.xml

This is the server.xml:

...

• There are two <Service> sections, their name attributes have different values.
• Every <Service> has its own <Connector>own <Connector>s with distinct ports
• Each connector must have its own distinct ports on the attributes port and redirectPort.
• The port of the the AJP-<Connector> is the same port to which we redirect on the Apache virtual host configuration.

...

To ensure content activation still works, you have to adjust the property /server/activation/subscribers/magnoliaPublic8080@URL:

...

:

 Note that the activation is using the HTTP connector.

URLs of the final setup

If you have all done correctly - you can access the Magnolia instance by the following URLs

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...