Question

I have a java application responding multiple domains and uses, for each domain, a specific apache virtual host. This because Apache is faster than tomcat, to serve static resources.

The need is to do that at runtime, without restart apache configuration.
To perform this action I’m using VirtualDocumentRoot directive, as described below:

AddType text/html .html .shtml
AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .html .shtml

NameVirtualHost *:80
UseCanonicalName Off
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName domain.com
    ServerAlias *

    # Define virtual host directory, using entire domain
    VirtualDocumentRoot /path/to/whosts/%0

    # Define directory access
    <Directory "/path/to/whosts/">
        Options -Indexes MultiViews +Includes
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>

    # Define Java Proxies
    <Proxy *>
        AddDefaultCharset Off
        Order deny,allow
        Allow from all
    </Proxy>

    # Allow Libs (static resources) to access apache directly
    ProxyPass /libs !
    ProxyPass / ajp://localhost:8009/
    ProxyPassReverse / ajp://localhost:8009/
</VirtualHost>

This does not work well, because if I try to access to http://www.domain.com, is different than access to domain.com.

Do you think is a good idea to register a symbolic link from http://www.domain.comto domain.com???

Exists another way to do that? I’m really poor in apache managing…

Thank’s a lot!

Ciao, Davide.

Answer 1

I regularly use symlinks to link multiple domains to the same webroot when doing configurations similar to this, there is no explicit harm in that solution so definitely no reason to shy away from it.