Virtual Hosts & mod rewrite

Virtual Hosts | mod_rewrite & Documentroot Problem

[GWiggs]

I have a site that currently runs a jsp and servlet based application. When the request comes in I use rewrite to make sure that the URL is

www.example.com/home/*

.

I am attempting to alter the site to add other virtual hosts for php (CakePHP) applications that I am writing.

I want to differentiate between routings by using the URL. If the URL contains

www.example.com/datamart/*

then I want to avoid passing the request to Tomcat and use the document root established for this new application.

NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *>
 ServerName www.orcastech.com
 rewriteengine on
 rewritelog logs/rewrite.log
 rewriteloglevel 1

RewriteRule !^/datamart - [C]
RewriteRule !^/emba48wiki - [C]
## If /home context already requested then do nothing
RewriteRule !^/home - [C]
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://www.orcastech.com/home/$1 [L]

SetEnvIf Request_URI \.php no-jk
SetEnvIf Request_URI \.cgi no-jk
# Use SetEnvIf to st no-jk when /datamart/ is encountered
SetEnvIf Request_URI "/datamart/*" no-jk

JkMount /home* worker1
 DocumentRoot "c:\Apache\apache-tomcat-6.0.29\webapps\home"
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *>
ServerPath /datamart/
DocumentRoot "C:\vhosts\datamart\htdocs"
CustomLog logs/system.datamart.access.log combined 
ErrorLog logs/system.datamart.com-error.log

</VirtualHost>

Essentially - If the request comes through as either example.com or example.com/home/ then I want to pass the request to Tomcat and use the tomcat document root. If the request comes through as example.com/datamart/* then I want to use the datamart directory.

Can anyone help me with this? When I check the error logs my errors come from "c:\Apache\apache-tomcat-6.0.29\webapps\home" - if things are working correctly, I should be seeing the server attempting to access "C:\vhosts\datamart\htdocs".

[jdMorgan]

I'll hazard a guess here, but with no guarantees... The main point being that you cannot have two DocumentRoots in the same vHost. So use mod_alias to pass requests --when needed-- over to Tomcat.

Other minor tweaks are for readability, compactness, and efficiency.

NameVirtualHost *:80
#
<VirtualHost *>
#
ServerName www.orcastech.com
ServerAlias orcastech.com
#
DocumentRoot "c:\vhosts\datamart\htdocs"
CustomLog logs/system.datamart.access.log combined
ErrorLog logs/system.datamart.com-error.log
#
SetEnvIf Request_URI "\.(php|cgi)$" no-jk
# Use SetEnvIf to st no-jk when /datamart/ is encountered
SetEnvIf Request_URI "^/datamart" no-jk
#
RewriteEngine on
RewriteLog logs/rewrite.log
RewriteLoglevel 1
#
RewriteCond $1 !^(datamart|emba48wiki|home)
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ http://www.orcastech.com/home/$1 [R=301,L]
#
JkMount /home worker1
Alias /home "c:\Apache\apache-tomcat-6.0.29\webapps\home"
#
</VirtualHost>

This probably still needs significant work, but I hope that it demonstrates the idea...

Jim

[GWiggs]

Jim,

Thanks for the quick reply. I've tried your solution as well as several modifications of your approach but all end in failure.

When I plug in exactly what you've provided above the URL www.example.com/datamart is rewritten to:

http://www.example.com/home/vhosts/datamart/app/webroot/htdocs/datamart

Also, under this same configuration, www.example.com is rewritten correctly to: www.example.com/home/ but I get a 403 error on that directory.

In my httpd.conf file DocumentRoot is set to "C:/htdocs".

I also tried it by creating the alias as C:/vhosts/datamart/htdocs and leaving the tomcat directory as the document root. In this case, I receive the 403 when I attempt to access the 'home' context and my 'datamart' url is still rewritten to:

http://www.orcastech.com/home/vhosts/datamart/app/webroot/htdocs/datamart

which makes no sense to me at all.

I know that this is on the right track, but something isn't working correctly. Any more ideas?

[jdMorgan]

It is most usual to give "DocumentRoot" paths which are relative to the Apache directory. Check (or test) to be sure you really need the full path in this line:

 DocumentRoot "c:\vhosts\datamart\htdocs" 

Jim