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 (etc/apache2/sites-enabled/www.example.com)

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so
LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so

NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
  
  ServerName www.example.com
  ServerAdmin webmaster@opencms.org
  DocumentRoot "${OPENCMS_HOME}"
  
  # Allow accessing the document root directory
  <Directory "${OPENCMS_HOME}">
    Options FollowSymlinks
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  </Directory>

  ErrorLog logs/errors_www.example.com.log
  CustomLog logs/access_www.example.com.log combined

  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteLog 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.