Defining Tomcat hosts without restarting Lucee

[Julian_Halliwell]

Thanks Igal, but that doesn’t seem to work in my dev setup. This is what I did:

1. removed the host entry (blog.test) from server.xml and restarted Lucee/Tomcat,

2. created the following file: [lucee-install]/tomcat/conf/Catalina/blog.test/ROOT.xml containing:

<Context path="" docBase="[path to blog app root, same value as in the server.xml host entry]" />

But all I get is the generic Lucee welcome page regardless of whether I hit the site via Tomcat or the external web server (IIS).

I tried restarting Tomcat a second time, but it still didn’t pick up the configuration.

I also tried defining the CATALINA_HOME and CATALINA_BASE system environment vars which weren’t present (both pointing to [lucee-install]/tomcat/), but that didn’t make any difference either.

I’m sure I’m doing something wrong.

@isapir

Julian, it’s very simple. You create a directory for each hostname in the following format:

$CATALINA_BASE/conf/[engine-name]/[hostname]/

$CATALINA_BASE is your Tomcat instance config directory (see my post with accompanying video on the subject at Rasia - Lucee and CFML Expert Support)

[engine-name] by default is Catalina

[hostname] is the hostname that Tomcat is listening on, e.g. localhost , blog.simplicityweb.co.uk , etc.

That’s the reason that the OP sees all of the sub-directories inside {tomcat}/conf/Catalina . In the absence of these directories, Tomcat creates them on the fly.

Inside that directory you will put a file for each Context in the format of [context-name].xml . For the default context you will use ROOT.xml .

So for your blog site, you would create the file

/{tomcat}/conf/Catalina/blog.simplicityweb.co.uk/ROOT.xml

That XML file can be as simple as an empty <Context /> element which will use all of the defaults, or define custom configurations for the Context, e.g.

<Context docBase="/srv/www/simplicityweb-blog">
  <!-- more configurations can go here !-->
</Context>

Reference: https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-9.0-doc/config/context.html#Defining_a_context

[isapir]

@Julian_Halliwell

removed the host entry (blog.test) from server.xml and restarted Lucee/Tomcat,

Don’t remove the Host entry. This is for defining Contexts, not Hosts.

[Julian_Halliwell]

Ah ok, I misunderstood then. I thought it was probably too good to be true We pretty much never need to add a context without also adding a host.

[joe.gooch]

You could use host manager with persist.

https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-8.5-doc/host-manager-howto.html

[Julian_Halliwell]

Good suggestion, Joe, but that’s not available with the packaged Lucee/Tomcat installation: https://lucee.daemonite.io/t/access-to-host-manager-in-lucee-5/1877/3

I like the idea of being able to script host creation as well as avoiding restarts though so perhaps I ought to learn how to do a standard Tomcat install and add Lucee to it.