JSF 2 / RichFaces 4 webapp with Apache and Tomcat not finding webapp resources library - apache

Question

I'm implementing a JSF2/RichFaces 4 web application running under Tomcat 7. I developed it under Eclipse using MyEclipse with Tomcat 7, everything works fine. When I deploy the application to the full production environment, the resource library images/css/js files get 404 from Apache. The production environment is Apache 2 with SSL and mod_proxy front-ending Tomcat 7. I'm suspecting the proxy setup is wrong and that, while the tomcat webapp runs, the Apache GET requests aren't being proxied properly, but I don't think I know enough to understand why.
Starting from the top, here's my apache virtual host with proxies (note *:443 for ssh):
NameVirtualHost *:443
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName testapp.xxx.org
SSLEngine on
SSLProxyEngine on
SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT:!SSLv2:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW
SSLCertificateFile /etc/pki/tls/certs/testapp.xxx.org.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/pki/tls/private/testapp.xxx.org.key
<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Proxy>
# Proxy everything to tomcat.
ProxyPass / http://localhost:8080/testapp/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/testapp/
</VirtualHost>
When I go to https://testapp.xxx.org, the application starts and displays the JSF but with no CSS, no js, and no images. The HTML for one such image resource looks like this, which is correct (same under Eclipse):
<img src="/testapp/javax.faces.resource/images/tairlogo.png.xhtml?ln=default" alt="TAIR web site" />
which should be starting at the webapp context root and looking for the resource library. The corresponding Apache access log GET is here:
"GET /testapp/javax.faces.resource/images/tairlogo.png.xhtml?ln=default HTTP/1.1" 404 12500
The actual JSF code for this image is:
<h:outputLink value="http://www.arabidopsis.org">
<h:graphicImage library="default" name="images/tairlogo.png"
alt="TAIR web site"></h:graphicImage>
</h:outputLink>

Answer 1

I think the problem is that your reverse proxy rule is assuming that the context name (testapp) is not present in the URL, while in the HTML you are assuming it is present (as in the src attribute of your img tag). You should either remove the context name in both the path and the target URL to proxy everything to Tomcat, e.g.:
ProxyPass / http://localhost:8080/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/
Or keep it in both to only proxy that webapp to Tomcat:
ProxyPass /testapp/ http://localhost:8080/testapp/
ProxyPassReverse /testapp/ http://localhost:8080/testapp/
This will make your webapp available at https://testapp.xxx.org/testapp/. If you don't want the context name part in the URL, you can deploy the webapp in the Tomcat root.