Making Life Simple » apache

Integrate Apache 2 with Tomcat 6

lalit — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:08:18 +0000

I have been trying to configure apache/tomcat is such a way that apache comes on the front-end so that I can have all the features of apache like URL rewriting, virtual hosts, PHP etc. and forward only certain requests to tomcat whose only job should be running servlets.

I have CentOS installed on my server with Apache 2 installed through yum and the goal was to install the binaries for Tomcat 6 and make them talk to each other. After some googling, the best tutorial I found to configure tomcat through mod_jk was found here. I have attached the PDF of the instructions here.
After following the steps, I was easily able to create a worker and configure apache to forward the request to /examples to tomcat.
The next issue was how to configure virtual hosts so that I can host multiple websites, some handled by apache and others through tomcat. Following is the snippet of httpd.conf setting that needs to be updated to enable virtual hosting.

NameVirtualHost *:80 # # NOTE: NameVirtualHost cannot be used without a port specifier # (e.g. :80) if mod_ssl is being used, due to the nature of the # SSL protocol. # # # VirtualHost example: # Almost any Apache directive may go into a VirtualHost container. # The first VirtualHost section is used for requests without a known # server name. # # # ServerAdmin webmaster@dummy-host.example.com # DocumentRoot /www/docs/dummy-host.example.com # ServerName dummy-host.example.com # ErrorLog logs/dummy-host.example.com-error_log # CustomLog logs/dummy-host.example.com-access_log common #ServerAdmin webmaster@lalitmehta.com ServerName www.lalitmehta.com ErrorLog logs/lalitmehta.com-error_log CustomLog logs/lalitmehta-access_log common ServerAdmin info@saiyam.com ServerName rsspile.com # No need of DocumentRoot ErrorLog logs/rsspile.com-error_log CustomLog logs/rsspile.com-access_log common JkMount /rss ajp13 JkMount /rss/* ajp13

I do have two questions though:
1. since mod_jk.so is available for download for Linux, what advantage you get by compiling Apache and mod_jk from source? Most of the websites mention the need to compile the source. Let me know
2. How do I enable SSL on my server with the above configuration?

Create self signing SSL Certificate

lalit — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:10:58 +0000

Generate server key
openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 4096
Create certificate signing request
openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr
Sign the certificate signing request with the server key
openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in server.csr -signkey server.key -out server.crt
Make the server key that does not need the password
openssl rsa -in server.key -out server.key.insecure
Do some house cleaning
mv server.key server.key.secure mv server.key.insecure server.key
Use the following files in apache configuration
server.key server.crt

Force SSL on apache

lalit — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:17:53 +0000

mod rewrite should be enabled on apache. Add the following to your apache config file.
######################################### #### XXX: BEGIN EDIT FOR MOD_REWRITE #### #### This is intended to force HTTPS #### #### for all inbound HTTP requests ####


####

# This module (mod_rewrite) simply tells Apache2 that all connections to

# port 80 need to go to port 443 – SSL – No exceptions

####


LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so





RewriteEngine on
####

# The line below sets the rewrite condition for mod_rewrite.so.

# That is, if the server port does not equal 443, then this condition is true

####
ReWriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !^443$
####

# The line below is the rule, it states that if above condition is true,

# and the request can be any url, then redirect everything to https:// plus

# the original url that was requested.

####
RewriteRule ^/(.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [NC,R,L]

#### XXX: END EDIT FOR MOD_REWRITE ####

Enable register_global through .htaccess

lalit — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 04:36:10 +0000

I would not recommend to enable register_globals, but if you need to enable the register_globals for a particular web folder, you can edit the .htaccess file and append the following to it

php_flag register_globals on

Restart apache and you are on your way.

Mounted cifs folder does not display images

lalit — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 04:09:43 +0000

To host a test website, I had mounted a folder on my Linux server from my Vista machine. When I opened the browser and went to the website, I was unable to view the images. The website worked fine except the images were not showing up. Upon a little research it turned out that I had to disable the “EnableSendfile” in my httpd.conf file.

EnableSendfile Off

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