Rename site without restarting Tomcat

[Adam De Lay]

I'm investigating changing our environment from ACF to Lucee.  We have customers that occasionally need their domain name changed and each time I try and rename the website directory, I get an error that something has a file open inside the directory.  I'm not very familiar with Tomcat, but here's what I know.  

A Web-INF directory is added to each site directory which contains references to site/server level configuration.  I've re-enabled the Tomcat Virtual Host Manager in an attempt to remove the Web-INF directory before the rename and it only seem to work after I restart Tomcat.  I used Process Explorer to figure out which file is still open and it seems to be Web-INF/context/lucee-context.lar (which seems to be an archive file?).

I've tried enabling the context option of antiResourceLocking="true" but for some reason it seems to create a copy of the entire site in tomcat/temp and the files don't update unless you restart Tomcat.  

If we end up switching to Lucee, we can easily have several hundred sites on a server and restarting every time we have a rename just cannot be done.

Any help anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Adam De Lay

[Nando Breiter]

Adam,

I've recently switched to using Nginx in front of Railo / now Lucee, and found you can configure multiple sites to use a single WEB-INF directory. I didn't have to restart Railo each time I added a new site this way, and I assume the same would be the case if you rename them.

In server.xml, I changed the default value of defaultHost from localhost to a name of my choice:

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

and then defined a host for it within this engine block, setting the context docBase like so:

      <Host name="mydefaulthost" appBase="webapps">

        <Context path="" docBase="/var/sites/" />

      </Host>

and restarted Railo to pick up the changes.

And then the Nginx configuration for each new site simply needs to include the subdirectory beneath the docBase directory, something like this:

upstream    lucee_servers {

server 127.0.0.1:8888;

keepalive 32;

}

server {

server_name .yourDomain.com;

listen 80;

root /var/sites/yourDomain-com;

index index.cfm

location / {

proxy_pass http://lucee_servers/yourDomain-com/;

}

}

Dots in directory names can be problematic when resolving dot delimited paths for CFC locations, so I've avoided using them in the example above. The trailing slash in the proxy_pass directive value is necessary for this type of configuration (running through the defaultHost context). If you set up a host for a given domain in server.xml, then Lucee will create a separate context for it, a separate WEB-INF directory, and you'll need to restart Lucee to pick up any changes (and in this case, the proxy_pass directive would be configured like this for the domain: proxy_pass http://lucee_servers;  no trailing slash, without the subdirectory.

If you are interested in going down this path, this blog post might help get you started.

https://dnando.github.io/blog/2015/01/05/advantages-of-nginx/

Aria Media Sagl
Via Rompada 40
6987 Caslano
Switzerland

+41 (0)91 600 9601
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[denstar]

On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 10:49 AM, Nando Breiter wrote:

Adam,

I've recently switched to using Nginx in front of Railo / now Lucee, and found you can configure multiple sites to use a single WEB-INF directory. I didn't have to restart Railo each time I added a new site this way, and I assume the same would be the case if you rename them.

... 

Ha!  I knew somebody had posted this solution recently!  You can do the same thing with Apache.

The new installers are bundling NGINX as the default webserver.  You can sill choose to connect to Apache HTTPD or IIS (that's the bit that's taking some sussing) but having a bundled front-end webserver makes a lot of things easier (and NGINX is only like 1-5 megs).

This is an interesting topic, as it's one major difference when porting apps-- Lucee will make contexts for each site, which is generally a Good Thing(tm), but not so much when your application is handling 50+ domains, as each one will get it's own web context-- which is generally not what is intended in those cases.

We could add an option to the installer to automatically set up "single instance" installs, which is what I'd tentatively call what Nando is doing here.  We'd need to make it clear /when/ to select that option, but I know several people have tried to port their apps and been sad when it appeared that the new engine couldn't handle the load, when in fact it can handle like twice the same load, when configured properly.

This brings restart-less domain adding, and eliminates the need to re-configure the webserver or the servlet container, which is also generally needed when your application is handling the domains itself, depending on how you've set things up.

There are plusses and minuses to this approach, but it's generally the only way to handle hundreds of domains without clustering or vertical scaling.

-Den*

[denstar]

Technically, with the setup Nando posted you do need to configure the webserver, but with some rewriting you can eliminate that need as well, though it will screw with cgi.script_path and such, so isn't code-neutral like adding a domain/vhost to the webserver is (as this example does).

-Den*

[Adam De Lay]

Nando,

Thanks for the information.  While we might go to Nginx down the road, right now our application is written specifically to interface with Coldfusion/Railo/Lucee and IIS.  It does give me hope for options though.  

Adam De Lay

[Adam De Lay]

Denny,

An installer that will configure a single-instance would definitely been needed in our environment.   All of our sites have the same configuration.  Right now we host over 2400 sites on 15 servers and we're trying to figure out if Lucee will be a viable option for us to migrate to.  

Adam De Lay

[Gavin Pickin]

Not sure why - but this didn't send from my email :(



Ok… anyone want to know how to achieve this Apache and Lucee?
I played around, did some testing, and this looks pretty solid.
Funny, its almost exactly what I do… just didn’t think about it.

If anyone has any issues with this, let me know, otherwise I’m going to tidy it up, Blog it, and we can add it to the Wiki.
The solution is the same in the server.XML as for Nginx earlier, but I’ll repeat it for completeness sake.


Name which Host Context will be your catchall, by setting  defaultHost in the Engine element

<Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost=“catchallHost”>

That means any URLs coming into Tomcat, that do not match a specific Host context, will use “catchallHost”

So lets add the Host element to our server.xml. You could use the default, but I would rather use a fresh one and invalidate the other one, just in case.

<Host name="catchallHost" appBase="webapps">
       <Context path="" docBase="/www/" />
</Host>

The docBase is the key here. From Apache you will pass a RELATIVE path based on this.
You could just map it to /www or /home/websites or c:\webs or whatever is relevant for you.
Just remember, it has to be a PARENT folder of all of your sites… you could add alias context paths for a complicated set of directories, but lets keep it simple.

Now, in my blog posts, I change my ports
So AJP is 8024
HTTP is 8504
Shutown is 8004

Now, in apache, I would usually have this code, based on the AJP protocol.

<Proxy *>
Allow from 127.0.0.1
</Proxy>
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyPassMatch ^/(.+\.cf[cm])(/.*)?$ ajp://localhost:8024/$1$2

What this does, it match everything with cfc or cfm or cfml, and then proxy to ajp localhost 8024… and tack on the matches.
If I do this now, it will match the /www from my context above.
I would normally add a Host context with a matching name, like the following

<Host name="meetthefamily.local.com" appBase="webapps">
    <Context path="" docBase="/www/ITB2014-Meet-The-Family"></Context>
</Host>

And that would pick up that Host and display it correctly.
This is our issue.

But by removing that Host Context, we can use the main context, and just adjust the ProxyPass

We change it to look like this… where we pass the Relative Directory from the main Host Context or /www

<Proxy *>
Allow from 127.0.0.1
</Proxy>
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyPassMatch ^/(.+\.cf[cm])(/.*)?$ ajp://localhost:8024/ITB2014-Meet-The-Family/$1$2


So now it works, and it works great.



The full request flow.

So apache sees a domain like meetthefamily.local.com, matches the Servername and pulls up the Apache Virtual Host… like this.
All non cfml resources are served from Apaches DocumentRoot

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin gpi...@mydomain.com
    DocumentRoot "/www//ITB2014-Meet-The-Family/"
    ServerName meetthefamily.local.com

<Proxy *>
Allow from 127.0.0.1
</Proxy>
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyPassMatch ^/(.+\.cf[cm])(/.*)?$ ajp://localhost:8024//ITB2014-Meet-The-Family//$1$2

</VirtualHost>

The ProxyPassMatch looks for all CFML requests and then passes it to Tomcat’s default  Host, and looks inside the WWW folder (root) for the relative path, in this case ITB2014-Meet-The-Family


Of course, if you want a separate Host Context for given apps etc, you surely can.
Since you are still using the AJP etc, you could setup a cluster of instances, and pass the path down too.
I am going to have to experiment with that more.



Simple, and no more stopping and starting Tomcat anymore.
BEAUTIFUL :)
I am glad I subscribed to get every post to this group… otherwise I might have missed this.


Very cool.


Gavin Pickin
http://www.gpickin.com

[Gavin Pickin]

I found a couple of issues.

You need to reset the mappings in the application.cfc

this.rootDir = getDirectoryFromPath( getCurrentTemplatePath() );
this.mappings[ "/" ] = this.rootDir;

Otherwise the following happens.

If you do
<cfinclude template=“/thefile.cfm”>

Since its not using Apache to resolve that, it resolves to
/www/theflie.cfm

Instead of
/www/MYWEBSITE/thefile.cfm


Same thing with component paths
<cfobject component="mappingTest.pathCom" name="TestGood">

It seems like it will do relative pathing, so if you are in
/www/MYWEBSITE/ it will walk down to mappingTest/pathCom.cfc

If you are in
/www/MYWEBSITE/test/ it searches
/www/MYWEBSITE/test/mappingTest/pathCom.cfc - not found
/www/mappingTest/pathCom.cfc - not found


If you reset the mapping though, it fixes itself.
In Lucee at least :)

[Gavin Pickin]

I thought no one had responded, so I blogged about it... but then online I saw my emails didn't go...
Here is my blog post is anyone wants to chime in.

http://www.gpickin.com/index.cfm/blog/apache-and-tomcat-save-yourself-the-xml-editing-no-more-tomcat-restarts

[Andrew Dixon]

Hi Gavin,

Had a quick scan of this, isn't this pretty much exactly the same as how mod_cfml works?

Kind regards,

Andrew

http://about.me/andrew_dixon

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[Adam De Lay]

Thanks Gavin.  I'm going to look at putting this in place.  I'll let you know any problems I have.

Adam

[Adam De Lay]

Gavin,

I'm going to end up showing my limited understanding of Tomcat here, so I apologize if I'm asking very simple questions.

I've changed the default context so a Web-INF is created outside the website folders.  For our environment, we store the sites in C:\Websites\.  So the default context path is now set to C:\websites.  We use IIS with the Boncode connector and when we create our sites in IIS (they're all created programmatically) the mappings to Tomcat are already created somehow, so we don't have to mess with setting up any Host Contexts.  I guess my question to you is how do we set it up so when we create a site in IIS the context defaults to the WEB-INF inside C:\Websites?  I don't see any VirtualHosts setup in our server.xml file for Tomcat.  Somehow Tomcat is becoming aware of the sites that are created in IIS but I'm not sure how.  

I can see in tomcat/conf/Catalina that a directory is automatically created for each site and inside the directory, there's a Root.xml file containing a context pointing to the website directory.  I would assume something has to change with the Bonecode connector?

Again, sorry if I'm asking very basic questions.

Adam

On Monday, February 9, 2015 at 2:19:24 AM UTC-5, Gavin Pickin wrote:

[Gavin Pickin]

IIS is very different.
Apache has VirtualHosts… in the httpd.conf or other included conf files
Tomcat has Hosts in Server.xml

Questions are all good, its how we learn, and I admit, I haven’t dealt with IIS with Tomcat, so I’m not sure I am much help here.
I haven’t touched that Connector in a while… maybe someone that does use it can help.

Sorry.


Andrew - mod_cfml does work like this essentially.
I have been answering that question a lot lately, I think I'm going to dig into this stuff deeper and blog on it all, since there are a few different ways to skin a cat.
Although, I wish we had a solution to the 404 issue... that's where I am really digging right now.

[Jordan Michaels]

Adam,

What you're seeing is *probably* the result of mod_cfml, which is installed by default in the Railo & Lucee installers that were produced by Vivio (documentation here: http://modcfml.org). mod_cfml with Railo/Lucee conforms to the J2EE specification that each new host within a servlet has it's own servlet context. Thus, why you see a new context created for each new domain. These contexts are stored in memory until you restart Tomcat.

> I guess my question to you is how do we set it up so when we create a site in
> IIS the context defaults to the WEB-INF inside C:\Websites?

mod_cfml & the BonCode connector do this for you automatically. As long as the site is configured correctly in IIS, the site information is then passed by the BonCode connector to Tomcat and the mod_cfml tomcat valve creates a new context for the new site using the information it gets from IIS. The process is described in great detail on the modcfml.org site.

Hope this helps!

-Jordan

> ServerAdmin gpi...@mydomain.com <javascript:>

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[Gavin Pickin]

<VirtualHost *:80>

ServerAdmin gpi...@skiion.com

DocumentRoot "/www//ITB2014-Meet-The-Family/"

ServerName meetthefamily.local.com

<Proxy *>

Allow from 127.0.0.1

</Proxy>

ProxyPreserveHost On

ProxyPassMatch ^/(.+\.cf[cm])(/.*)?$ ajp://localhost:8024//ITB2014-Meet-The-Family//$1$2

</VirtualHost>

The ProxyPassMatch looks for all CFML requests and then passes it to Tomcat’s default  Host, and looks inside the WWW folder (root) for the relative path, in this case ITB2014-Meet-The-Family

Of course, if you want a separate Host Context for given apps etc, you surely can.

Since you are still using the AJP etc, you could setup a cluster of instances, and pass the path down too.

I am going to have to experiment with that more.

Simple, and no more stopping and starting Tomcat anymore.

BEAUTIFUL :) 

I am glad I subscribed to get every post to this group… otherwise I might have missed this.

Very cool.

Gavin Pickin

gpi...@gmail.com

http://www.gpickin.com

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[Gavin Pickin]

Gavin Pickin

gpi...@gmail.com

http://www.gpickin.com

[Gavin Pickin]

I will experiment with this and apache… I know adding Apache confs is one thing, but messing with Tomcat confs as well is a big downside for most people.

If it could be MORE LIKE ACF with that respect, it will pick up a lot quicker.

If anyone has any links / resources that might help, let me know.

I’ll blog the whole thing when I’m done.

Gavin Pickin

gpi...@gmail.com

http://www.gpickin.com

On Feb 6, 2015, at 10:21 AM, denstar <vallia...@gmail.com> wrote:

Technically, with the setup Nando posted you do need to configure the webserver, but with some rewriting you can eliminate that need as well, though it will screw with cgi.script_path and such, so isn't code-neutral like adding a domain/vhost to the webserver is (as this example does).

-Den*

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[Gavin Pickin]

IIS is very different.

Apache has VirtualHosts… in the httpd.conf or other included conf files

Tomcat has Hosts in Server.xml

Questions are all good, its how we learn, and I admit, I haven’t dealt with IIS with Tomcat, so I’m not sure I am much help here.

I haven’t touched that Connector in a while… maybe someone that does use it can help.

Sorry… 

Gavin Pickin

gpi...@gmail.com

http://www.gpickin.com

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[Adam De Lay]

No worries Gavin.  Thanks for all your help in explaining things.

Jordan, thanks for the information.  I will definitely dig into modcfml.org.

If nothing else, I've found that I can move the web context directories outside the site folder themselves so I can still perform rename operations on the sites themselves without restarting.  While it might still make more work for the server that's not necessary, at least we can keep pushing forward.

Adam 

[Gavin Pickin]

Also, I found that if you do want to create xml host records… you can have tomcat watch files and reload.

I’m going to test this more, maybe tonight, because you can set what files you want tomcat to watch… so I’d like to try my INCLUDE approach, so I don’t have to update server.xml but my inc_lucee_hosts.xml file.

Of course, I want to see if a reload, is as slow as a restart… so i’ll check and see how long it takes for the change to kick in.

If tomcat keeps responding, during reload, that would be pretty cool.

I like having separate contexts, but at the same time… all the restarts can be confusing.

Managing the context is easier with some tools and automation, if the reload works, I think this is even better than the proxy solution.

Good news is, it would work easily on IIS too… since the solution is in tomcat, so you don’t have to complicate the IIS settings at all.

I’ll report what I find out.

I’m glad some experienced people like Jordan are sharing, its hard figuring this all out on your own… it is much appreciated.

Thanks

Gavin Pickin

gpi...@gmail.com

http://www.gpickin.com

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