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Why Apache/Tomcat (by default) does not allow symbolic linking except in top apache/lib directory?

+1 vote
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Apache/Tomcat (by default) does not allow symbolic linking (nice as it can cross mounted file systems) except in the top apache/lib directory. I use hard links in the Application/WEB-INF/lib directories to reduce copying and help me manage things.

HOWEVER, some applications have special needs - e.g. pictures. You don't want to always distribute these with the release of the application (Application.war file), so symbolic links are the way to go (except for MS land, sorry). The nice solution to this is:

.../webapps/Application/WEB-INF/context.xml
which must contain at least the two below lines:

However this allows ALL symbolic linking in the Application directory. I agree with the developers that this is dangerous.

Is there some way to allow linking in just ONE sub-directory of the Application?
- e.g. .../webapps/Application/images

This would allow all I need to have local images for the application without endangering other things using a symbolic link.

posted Dec 15, 2013 by Sheetal Chauhan

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Hmmm - I use JNDI for connections and you lost me with extra paths - although it appears this is exactly what I want.

extraResourcePaths="/WEB-INF/classes=/Users/theuser/mywebapp/target/classes,/pictures=/Users/theuser/mypictures,/movies=/Users/theuser/mymovies"/>
extraResourcePaths="/WEB-INF/classes=/Users/theuser/mywebapp/target/classes,/pictures=/Users/theuser/mypictures,/movies=/Users/theuser/mymovies"/>

This is exactly what I was thinking, I will start digging to learn how to use properly.

1 Answer

+1 vote

If you're deploying in the appBase directory, then this should work:

Place this in either META-INF/context.xml of your web application, or in $CATALINA_BASE/conf/[hostname]/[appname].xml

Modify the above to fit your requirements. Note that the META-INF/context.xml file is no longer copied to $CATALINA_BASE/conf/[hostname]/[appname].xml by default.

Read the following to understand how these two interact. http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/config/host.html

(search for copyXML on the above page).

answer Dec 15, 2013 by anonymous
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Now the issue is when I hit the url http://:86 and after providing the credentials, it is redirecting to https://:86 and throwing the below error.

Error in browser:

Secure Connection Failed

An error occurred during a connection to x.x.x.x:86. SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length. (Error code: ssl_error_rx_record_too_long)

Error in logs:

"x16x03x01" 501

[Thu Jan 08 08:22:46 2015] [debug] ssl_engine_io.c(1523): OpenSSL: I/O error, 11 bytes expected to read on BIO#1bf568 [mem: 1f3930]
[Thu Jan 08 08:22:46 2015] [debug] ssl_engine_kernel.c(1806): OpenSSL: Exit: error in SSLv2/v3 read client hello A
[Thu Jan 08 08:22:46 2015] [info] (70014)End of file found: SSL handshake interrupted by system [Hint: Stop button pressed in browser?!]
[Thu Jan 08 08:22:46 2015] [info] Connection to child 3 closed with abortive shutdown(server pritoolvca1.sw.ericsson.se:443 [2], client 153.88.164.216)
[Thu Jan 08 08:23:53 2015] [error] [client 172.17.136.153] Invalid method in request x16x03x01

Could you please suggest where it might went wrong and the way forward..

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