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Tomcat Listening in a Domain

When we want to publish our services in a specific domain such as api.josdem.io and that services are hosted in a Tomcat, the best way I can recommend you to do it is using a AJP connector. In this post I’ll show you how to do it.

Light Tomcat

The first thing you must do is get rid of configuration you don’t need in your Tomcat, this give you the next advantages:

  • Less code
  • Faster Tomcat
  • Better knowledge what you have
  • Better control

This is a file example how you can configure your “light” Tomcat file: $TOMCAT_HOME/config/server.xml

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<Server port="8001" shutdown="SHUTDOWN">
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.startup.VersionLoggerListener" />
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener" SSLEngine="on" />
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.JasperListener" />
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.JreMemoryLeakPreventionListener" />
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.GlobalResourcesLifecycleListener" />
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.ThreadLocalLeakPreventionListener" />
  <Service name="Catalina">
    <Connector port="8010" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" />
    <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost" jvmRoute="jmetadata">
      <Host name="localhost"  appBase="webapps"
            unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true">
        <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>

Notice jvmRoute parameter is added as AJP Connector.

A record configuration

It is important you have your domain pointing to your IP address. Usually, you can do this creating an A record in your domain management. As soon as you got it, you should do something like this:

$nslookup jmetadata.josdem.io

Server:   127.0.1.1
Address:  127.0.1.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: jmetadata.josdem.io
Address: 52.8.244.12

Creating a virtual host in your Apache Server

Next step is create a file named josdem.io.conf in /etc/httpd/conf.d with this your Apache will know how connect your Tomcat, here is my example file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  DocumentRoot "/var/www/html/website"
  ServerName josdem.io
  ServerAlias jmetadata.josdem.io
  <Directory "/var/www/html/website">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride All
    Order Deny,Allow
    Allow from all
  </Directory>
  ErrorLog logs/jmetadata.josdem.io-error_log
  CustomLog logs/jmetadata.josdem.io-access_log common

  <Proxy balancer://clusterJmetadata>
    BalancerMember ajp://localhost:8010 route=jmetadata
    ProxySet stickysession=JSESSIONID
  </Proxy>

  ProxyPass /manage-balancer !
  ProxyPass / balancer://clusterJmetadata/ stickysession=JSESSIONID
  ProxyPassReverse / balancer://clusterJmetadata/

  <Location /manage-balancer>
    SetHandler balancer-manager
  </Location>
</VirtualHost>

Tomcat as a service

Finally you may want to start, stop your tomcat service as any service in your server, so here is an example. File: /etc/rc.d/init.d/tomcatJmetadata

#!/bin/bash
#
# tomcat7     This shell script takes care of starting and stopping Tomcat
#
# chkconfig: - 80 20
#
## BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: tomcat7
# Required-Start: $network $syslog
# Required-Stop: $network $syslog
# Default-Start:
# Default-Stop:
# Description: Release implementation for Servlet 2.5 and JSP 2.1
# Short-Description: start and stop tomcat
## END INIT INFO

## Source function library.
#. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
TOMCAT_HOME=/opt/tomcat_jmetadata
export JAVA_HOME=/opt/jdk1.7.0_79
export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH
SHUTDOWN_WAIT=20

tomcat_pid() {
  echo `ps aux | grep tomcat_jmetadata | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $2 }'`
}

start() {
  pid=$(tomcat_pid)
  if [ -n "$pid" ]
  then
    echo "Tomcat is already running (pid: $pid)"
  else
    # Start tomcat
    echo "Starting tomcat"
    #ulimit -n 100000
    umask 007
    #/bin/su -p -s /bin/sh tomcat $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/startup.sh
    /bin/sh $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/startup.sh
  fi


  return 0
}

stop() {
  pid=$(tomcat_pid)
  if [ -n "$pid" ]
  then
    echo "Stoping Tomcat"
    #/bin/su -p -s /bin/sh tomcat $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh
    /bin/sh $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh

    let kwait=$SHUTDOWN_WAIT
    count=0;
    until [ `ps -p $pid | grep -c $pid` = '0' ] || [ $count -gt $kwait ]
    do
      echo -n -e "\nwaiting for processes to exit";
      sleep 1
      let count=$count+1;
    done

    if [ $count -gt $kwait ]; then
      echo -n -e "\nkilling processes which didn't stop after $SHUTDOWN_WAIT seconds"
      kill -9 $pid
    fi
  else
    echo "Tomcat is not running"
  fi

return 0
}

case $1 in
start)
  start
;;
stop)
  stop
;;
restart)
  stop
  start
;;
status)
  pid=$(tomcat_pid)
  if [ -n "$pid" ]
  then
    echo "Tomcat is running with pid: $pid"
  else
    echo "Tomcat is not running"
  fi
;;
esac
exit 0

Follow this final steps:

  1. Give execution provilegies to users: sudo hmod 755 tomcatJmetadata
  2. Add service to the system with: sudo chkconfig --add tomcatJmetadata
  3. List services to confirm refistration: sudo chkconfig --list
  4. Execute: service tomcatJemtadata start to start your tomcat service

Now, you should get your service in the: http://jmetadata.josdem.io base

You may see your new service listed.

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