Apache forwarding to tomcat shows a blank page

Question

I have an application running on tomcat at http://www.example.com:9090/mycontext. The host name in server.xml points to www.example.com. I do not have localhost anymore. I am using apache to forward requests to tomcat using mod_proxy. Things work fine as long as the ProxyPath is /mycontext. The server name setup in virtual host is www.abc.com and http://www.abc.com/mycontext works fine. However I would like to ignore the context path and simply use http://www.abc.com/ to forward requests to http://www.example.com:9090/mycontext. When I do this, apache shows me a blank page. What am I missing here? I have not changed anything in server.xml except the default host to www.example.com.

<VirtualHost *:80>
 ServerName www.abc.com

 ProxyRequests Off
 ProxyPreserveHost On

 <Proxy *>
 Order deny,allow
 Allow from all
 </Proxy>

 ProxyPass / http://www.example.com:9090/mycontext
 ProxyPassReverse / http://www.example.com:9090/mycontext
 </VirtualHost>

Thanks

Solution

Matching trailing slashes are important in mod_proxy.

ProxyPass / http://www.example.com:9090/mycontext

This will take a request to http://www.abc.com/something and proxy it to http://www.example.com:9090/mycontextsomething - not terribly helpful!

Try this configuration, instead:

ProxyPass / http://www.example.com:9090/mycontext/
ProxyPassReverse / http://www.example.com:9090/mycontext/

---

Also - if Tomcat's expecting www.example.com as a host header, then you probably do not want that ProxyPreserveHost On directive.

Comments

[meulop]

Can you add the relevant bits of your httpd.conf file to the question?

[user10211]

I have added the virtual host settings. Is there anything else I should add?

[ravi yarlagadda]

Is it Apache's "It works" page, or Tomcat's?

[user10211]

It is Apache's "It works page."

[ravi yarlagadda]

Interesting... are you sure the request to / has the correct host header to get mapped to this virtual host?

[user10211]

I checked the apache access log. It shows that a request made to / gets directed to /mycontext/. Should it explicitly show example.com:9090/mycontext

[ravi yarlagadda]

Ahh, I see. Do you need for it to make that request without the trailing slash? That'll be more complicated to add to the config.

[user10211]

Essentially my tomcat setup is serving a JSP page at :9090/mycontext/ and I would like http: //www.abc.com/ to get redirected to this page. Does it involve rewrite rules setting up for just this redirection ?

[ravi yarlagadda]

No, that should be working just fine. Can you clarify what you meant by "It shows that a request made to / gets directed to /mycontext/" - is that not what you're looking to achieve?