Configuring a remote Apache HTTP server

Configure Apache HTTPd with Jakarta Tomcat Connector (mod_jk)

This is the simplest way to re-route requests from the Apache HTTPd to the Geronimo servers (or any other server you may have). To use this feature you will need to enable some specific modules and add a few lines to the HTTPd configuration. These steps are described next.

1. Open the httpd.conf located in the <httpd_home>\conf directory.
2. Look for the following LoadModule directives and uncomment them by removing the # at the beginning of the line.
   • LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so
   • LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so
3. At the bottom of the httpd.conf add the following lines to enable the re-rounting.
   • ProxyPass /console http://localhost:8080/console
   • ProxyPass /images http://localhost:8080/images
   • ProxyPassreverse / http://localhost:8080/

You may need to add more ProxyPass directives depending on the requirements of your application. The last ProxyPassreverse directive captures the responses from the Geronimo server and masks the URL as it would be directly responded by the Apache HTTPd hiding the identity/location of the Geronimo server.

In this example the console has been enabled just for demonstation purposes. In a production environment you will not want to have the console accessible from the other network (normally the Internet). Having the console accessible represents a big security exposure. The rule is that everything should have restricted access, normally a firewall would be placed in between the HTTP and the application server (depending on the topology) and you should map just the minumum resources necessary to have your application working from the other side.

If both HTTPd and Geronimo servers are in the same machine you can use localhost for the redirection, when the servers are located in different machines you would have to specify the URL for the Geronimo server.

As the result of this configuration, when you point your browser to http://locahost/console, the request will be redirected to http://localhost:8080/console. This option allows to re-route URLs and ports.