Tomcat / Apache / Grails Config - apache

Question

Hoping someone can help / advise as i'm not very familiar with Apache / Tomcat .. I already have Apache in front of Tomcat with grails app deployed. I have IIs setup (by someone else) which redirects www.xyz.com/myApp to an Apache instance which runs a grails app. In my apache conf I have a proxy ..
ProxyPass /myApp http://localhost:8080/myApp
ProxyPassReverse /myApp http://localhost:8080/myApp
and I have a connector defined in my tomcat server.xml
<Connector port="8080" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192"
maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true"
acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true"
clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS"
proxyName="www.xyz.com"
proxyPort="443" />
This works without problem
I now want to add another app so in IIS I had setup for me www.xyz.com/myOtherApp
with
ProxyPass /myOtherApp http://localhost:8081/anotherApp
ProxyPassReverse /myOtherApp http://localhost:8081/anotherApp
in my Apache conf I added another connector
<Connector port="8081" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192"
maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true"
acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true"
clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS"
proxyName="www.xyz.com"
proxyPort="443" />
When i go to www.xyz.com/myOtherApp i get the url rendered (correctly i think) as https://www.xyz.com/anotherApp but with a 404 error saying "Object not Found" ..
Can anyone help me with the config ? Is it possible to have 2 connectors on different ports
with the same proxyName ? As i say i'm not familiar with Apache/Tomcat and i'd really like to get this done asap ..
Thanks
Hi #Stefan, The apps do live on the same server and domain so i eliminated one of the connector definitions . I'm now left with
<Server port="8005" shutdown="SHUTDOWN">
<Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener" SSLEngine="on" />
<Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.JasperListener" />
<Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.ServerLifecycleListener" />
<Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.GlobalResourcesLifecycleListener" />
<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" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192"
maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true"
acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true"
clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS"
proxyName="www.xyz.com"
proxyPort="443" />
<Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost">
<Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm"
resourceName="UserDatabase"/>
<Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps"
unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"
xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false">
</Host>
</Engine>
</Service>
</Server>
Also I switched on the logging (JULI) but it didn't seem to report anything . The apache error log just gives me a 404 .. I left it as HTTP rather than AJP as i'd have to setup HTTPS and i'm not sure how easy that is. So i'm left with the same problem in that one app works, the other doesn't .. Is it possible to run multiple grails apps over http as opposed to using ajp and virtual hosts ? Forgive me if i'm being stupid - i haven't had much exposure to webapps and i seem to have come to a grinding halt at what i thought should have been relatively easy - deployment !

Answer 1

If you want to use Apache in front of Tomcat, it's better to use mod_proxy_ajp instead of mod_proxy_http. For setting this up, see https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/~steve.swinsburg/Fronting+Tomcat+with+Apache+via+mod_proxy_ajp.
Be sore to add
ProxyRequests Off
<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from localhost
</Proxy>
to your config to prevent abuse of the proxy.
If /myApp and /myOtherApp reside in the same tomcat engine, you only need a single connector for both apps. Aside from this, I can see no obvious error in your setup. Maybe you could post your tomcat's server.xml. During working on the config, using LogLevel Debug might be a good idea.

Answer 2

This isn't a direct answer to your question, but I was configuring Tomcat behind Apache before and I had problem with it.
I now use Amazons Elastic beanstalk...where you can deploy your grails app war file directly. It works a beautifully, especially with in built auto scaling and health monitoring!
Less configuration == Ease of life.