This page explains how to set up an Apache HTTP Server (httpd) in front of Tomcat on a local machine for development purposes. This page is not intended as a guide for a system administrator to set up a production environment.
At the end you can access the Magnolia contexts with different domains which both serve from root. This kind of setup may help testing multisite scenarios during local development to emulate a production environment scenario.
This page assumes that you are using a Mac or something similar. This is especially true concerning the paths to Apache configuration files. However, the information here should also apply to other OS.
Domains and /etc/hosts
This is an overview of the the multisite setup:
| author instance | public instance | |
|---|---|---|
| comics | author.best-comics.net | www.best-comics.net |
| vinyl | author.best-comics.net | www.best-vinyl.net |
Note that we use only one domain - a subdomain of the "main domain" - to access the author instance (which is recommended practice).
To enable this without DNS, add the following line to your /etc/hosts file:
127.0.0.1 author.best-comics.net www.best-comics.net www.best-vinyl.net
Apache setup
Make sure you have a working Apache on your local machine.
Helpful Apache commands
Whenever you change Apache configuration files, you have to restart the httpd process.
Restart the process
sudo apachectl restart
Check the configuration
apachectl configtest
Enable mod_proxy
Make sure your Apache has the module mod_proxy enabled.
Check the /etc/apache2/httpd.conf file and make sure the following line is not commented:
LoadModule proxy_module libexec/apache2/mod_proxy.so
On a different OS, the path and suffix of the module may be different.
If you edit the file, you must restart Apache.
Enable vhosts
We use virtual hosts configuration in this setup. You must make sure vhosts are enabled. Check the /etc/apache2/httpd.conf file and make sure the line with the include directive is not commented:
# Virtual hosts Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
Define virtual hosts
We want to redirect requests from <distinct-domain> to localhost:<port>/$context 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/
ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/projekt.local-error_log"
CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/projekt.local-access_log" common
</VirtualHost>
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 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
We 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.
It works. The same can be done with the context magnoliaPublic instead of magnoliaAuthor.
Usage in a production environment
In a productive environment, you probably have 2 hosts / servers in different networks, in which one server contains one Tomcat serving a single instance. If this is true, the setup described above is feasible.
Use in a production environment at your own risk. This page is not intended as a guide for a System administrator.
Serve both contexts from root
Now we expand the setup above to make sure we can access the Magnolia instances with the following domains:
| author instance | public instance |
|---|---|
| author.best-comics.net | www.best-comics.net www.best-vinyl.net |
Virtual hosts configuration
We add two more virtual hosts to Apache. Here is the httpd-vhosts.conf with three virtual hosts, one for the author instance and two for the public instance:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName author.best-comics.net
ProxyPass / http://localhost:8080/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.best-comics.net
ProxyPass / http://localhost:8081/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8081/
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.best-vinyl.net
ProxyPass / http://localhost:8081/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8081/
</VirtualHost>
www.best-comics.net and www.best-vinyl.net are redirected to localhost on port 8081, whereas author.best-comics.net redirects to localhost on port 8080.
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.
One solution is to have two running Tomcats, however, starting and stoping may be a bit time-consuming.
Instead, we can do the following:
- Define two
<Service>sections in theserver.xml. - Each
<Service>:- Has a
<Connector>with a distinct port. - Serves from its own
webappsdirectory. - Defines one host which wraps exactly one context to be served from root.
- Has a
webapps directory
We assume that the bundle has already been started once and that both webapps have been properly installed.
This is the adapted Tomcat directory structure:
├── bin
├── conf
├── lib
├── webapps
│ ├── ROOT
│ └── magnoliaAuthor
└── webapps2
└── magnoliaPublic
- Create the folder
webapps2. - Move the webapp
magnoliaPublictowebapps2.
server.xml
This is the server.xml:
<?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">
<Context path="" docBase="magnoliaAuthor" />
<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" directory="logs" prefix="localhost_access_log" suffix=".txt" pattern="%h %l %u %t "%r" %s %b" />
</Host>
</Engine>
</Service>
<Service name="Catalina2">
<Connector port="8081" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
connectionTimeout="20000"
redirectPort="8444" />
<Connector port="8010" enableLookups="false" redirectPort="8444" protocol="AJP/1.3" />
<Engine name="Catalina2" defaultHost="localhost">
<Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm">
<Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm" resourceName="UserDatabase"/>
</Realm>
<Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps2" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true">
<Context path="" docBase="magnoliaPublic" />
<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" directory="logs" prefix="localhost_access_log" suffix=".txt" pattern="%h %l %u %t "%r" %s %b" />
</Host>
</Engine>
</Service>
</Server>
- There are two
<Service>sections, theirnameattributes have different values. - Every
<Service>has its own<Connector> - Each connector must have its own distinct ports on the attributes
portandredirectPort. - The
portof the<Connector>is the same port to which we redirect on the Apache virtual host configuration.
Final adjustments on the Magnolia instance
Adjust the subscriber for content activation
To ensure content activation still works, you have to adjust the property /server/activation/subscribers/magnoliaPublic8080@URL:
| Node name | Value |
|---|---|
| http://localhost:8081 |