Avoiding /opencms/opencms in the URL (apache + mod proxy)

If you are running OpenCms (7.5 or greater) in Tomcat using an Apache front end (WITH MOD_PROXY, NOT MOD_JK), there are four basic steps to configuring your environment for avoiding the /opencms/opencms in the URL:

Add site information to OpenCMS's configuration

In order to make your new site available within OpenCMS, we need to modify the opencms-system.xml configuration file, located in ${TOMCAT_HOME}\webapps\${OPENCMS_WEBAPP}\WEB-INF\config\.

Find the <sites> node of opencms-system.xml and modify it as follows:

<sites>
  <workplace-server>http://www.example.com</workplace-server>
  <default-uri>/</default-uri>
  <site server="http://www.example.com" uri="/sites/default/" />
</sites>

Adjust OpenCms automatic link generation (static export, module-resources)

This configuration is only valid if OpenCms is installed as the ROOT application in Tomcat. Edit the file “WEB-INF/config/opencms-importexport.xml” in your OpenCms installation to look as follows:

<rendersettings>
  <rfs-prefix>${CONTEXT_NAME}/export</rfs-prefix>
  <vfs-prefix>/</vfs-prefix>
  ...
</rendersettings>

Defining the tomcat connectors

edit the ${TOMCAT_HOME}/conf/server.xml and define two connectors like:

<Connector port="8009"
 address="127.0.0.1"
 protocol="AJP/1.3"
 redirectPort="8443"
 emptySessionPath="true"
 enableLookups="false"/>

<Connector port="8081"
 maxHttpHeaderSize="8192"
 maxThreads="150"
 minSpareThreads="25"
 maxSpareThreads="75"
 enableLookups="false"
 redirectPort="8443"
 acceptCount="100"
 proxyName="www.example.com"
 proxyPort="80"
 useBodyEncodingForURI="true"
 connectionTimeout="20000"
 disableUploadTimeout="true"
 emptySessionPath="true" />

The port attribute (8081 in the example above) should be unique within your server.xml. The proxyName attribute should match the server attribute in your site definition in opencms-system.xml above.

Once you've made this change and restarted Tomcat, you should be able to go to http://YourTomcatServer:8081/opencms/opencms/ and see your MyNewSite content.

Add site information to Apache's configuration

Finally, we need to add a virtual host to Apache to handle requests for your new site. This will be done in httpd.conf (location varies depending on the layout under which you installed Apache -- on my system, it's in /usr/local/etc/apache). In Apache 1.3.x, the virtual host configuration will look something like:

<VirtualHost *:80>
 ServerName www.example.com
 ServerAdmin webmaster@opencms.org
 DocumentRoot "C:\dev\Tomcat6.0\webapps\opencms"
 # Allow accessing the document root directory
 <Directory "C:\dev\Tomcat6.0\webapps\opencms">
   Options FollowSymlinks
   AllowOverride All
   Order allow,deny
   Allow from all
 </Directory>
 ErrorLog C:\dev\Apache2.0\Apache2\logs\errors_www.example.com.log
 CustomLog C:\dev\Apache2.0\Apache2\logs\access_www.example.com.log combined
 RewriteEngine On
 RewriteLog C:\dev\Apache2.0\Apache2\logs\rewrite_www.example.com.log
 RewriteLogLevel 9
 RewriteCond       %{REQUEST_URI}                                            ^/opencms/export/(.*)  [NC]
 RewriteCond       "%{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_FILENAME}"                     !-f
 RewriteCond       "%{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_FILENAME}/index_export.html"   !-f
 RewriteRule       .*                                                        http://127.0.0.1:8081/opencms/opencms/handle404?exporturi=%{REQUEST_URI}&%{QUERY_STRING} [P]
 # If the request starts with /${WEBAPP_NAME}/resources, delete the /${WEBAPP_NAME} prefix
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}                           ^/opencms/resources/.*$
 RewriteRule ^/opencms/(.*)$                          /$1 [PT]
 # Also redirect all other 404 errors to OpenCms
 ErrorDocument     404                                /system/shared/handle404.html
 RedirectPermanent /opencms/opencms/                  http://www.example.com/
 ProxyPass         /opencms/opencms/                  !
 ProxyPass         /opencms/resources/                !
 ProxyPass         /opencms/export/                   !
 ProxyPass         /                                  http://127.0.0.1:8081/opencms/opencms/
 ProxyPassReverse  /                                  http://127.0.0.1:8081/opencms/opencms/
</VirtualHost>

The ServerName is the hostname that'll be matched against any incoming requests -- it doesn't have to match your Tomcat proxyName and OpenCMS site server, but it'll be less confusing to troubleshoot later if it does. The URL used in the ProxyPass and ProxyPassReverse lines should point to the Tomcat connector you configured in the previous step.

To add more sites, you need to add NameVirtualHost *:80 before the first <VirtualHost>; otherwise, apache will report [warn] _default_ VirtualHost overlap on port 80, the first has precedence.