A few days ago, I set up a virtual host on my server using JBoss/Tomcat with an Apache front-end. It was pretty simple. First thing is that I edited the server.xml document located in the tomcat sar directory in the deploy directory of your favorite server (minimal, default, or all). When I refer to the tomcat sar I am referring to the sar directory that houses all tomcat information. On my current server (JBoss-4.0.2), the sar directory is called jbossweb-tomcat55.sar

In the server.xml file you will see something similar to the following...

<Server>

   <Service name="jboss.web"
      className="org.jboss.web.tomcat.tc5.StandardService">

      <!-- A HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8080 -->
      <Connector port="8080" address="${jboss.bind.address}" .../>

      <!-- A AJP 1.3 Connector on port 8009 -->
      <Connector port="8009" address="${jboss.bind.address}" .../>

      <!-- SSL/TLS Connector configuration using the admin devl guide keystore
      <Connector port="8443" address="${jboss.bind.address}" .../>

      <Engine name="jboss.web" defaultHost="localhost">
         <Host name="localhost"
            autoDeploy="false" deployOnStartup="false" deployXML="false">
             ....
         </Host>
         <!--Here is where you will set up your hosts -->

      </Engine>

   </Service>
</Server>

Inside the engine element is where you will set up your hosts configuration. Currently there is a host set up for localhost. What needs to be done is that there needs to be a sibling to localhost set up for your new virtual host.

<Server>

   <Service name="jboss.web"
      className="org.jboss.web.tomcat.tc5.StandardService">

      <!-- A HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8080 -->
      <Connector port="8080" address="${jboss.bind.address}" .../>

      <!-- A AJP 1.3 Connector on port 8009 -->
      <Connector port="8009" address="${jboss.bind.address}" .../>

      <!-- SSL/TLS Connector configuration using the admin devl guide keystore
      <Connector port="8443" address="${jboss.bind.address}" .../>

      <Engine name="jboss.web" defaultHost="localhost">
         <Host name="localhost"
            autoDeploy="false" deployOnStartup="false" deployXML="false">
             ....
         </Host>
         
         <Host name="virtualhost2" autoDeploy="false"
                deployOnStartup="false" 
                deployXML="false">

             <!-- Add all your aliases here -->
             <Alias>virtual.evolutionnext.com</Alias>
             <Alias>myvirtual.evolutionnext.com</Alias>

              <!-- Set up logging -->
              <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValue" prefix="virtualhost2" suffix=".log" pattern="common" directory="${jboss.server.home.dir}/log"/>
               <DefaultContext cookies="true" crossContext="true" override="true"/>
         </Host>
         

      </Engine>

   </Service>
</Server>

Restart the JBoss server and your JBoss server is ready to host a new subhost. Remember to update your DNS servers! Unfortunately the simplest things are the hardest to figure out, and it took me a while to figure out to update my DNS server.

If you are using Apache as a front end. What I did is modify my mod-jk.conf to let all traffic through to JBoss and let jboss take care of the virtual hosting. There is a sample of my mod-jk.conf below. Before doing this the easy way, I was trying to set up a virtual through httpd.conf and that seemed to have been fruitless and aggravating. You should probably know already by now how torturous it is to edit the httpd.conf file. I think you will find it a pleasure to let JBoss handle all J2EE virtual hosting.

# Load mod_jk module
# Specify the filename of the mod_jk lib
LoadModule jk_module modules/mod_jk.so

# Where to find workers.properties
JkWorkersFile conf/workers.properties

# Where to put jk logs
JkLogFile logs/mod_jk.log

# Set the jk log level [debug/error/info]
JkLogLevel info

# Select the log format
JkLogStampFormat  "[%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y]"

# JkRequestLogFormat
JkRequestLogFormat "%w %V %T"

# Mount your applications
JkMount /* mainWorker

Notice my JkMount is letting all traffic through. If I have something else specific that I need apache to care of I provide an explicit path in my httpd.conf directory. That would usually be non-J2EE services like Subversion for example.

The last thing that is needed, is to adjust your webapp. If, in your war file you do not have a jboss-web.xml file in your WEB-INF directory, create one, and put in the following. If you are updating yours, then make sure that it has the following elements...

<jboss-web>
	<context-root>/</context-root>  <!--Make what ever context root you want -->
	<virtual-host>virtual.evolutionnext.com</virtual-host>
</jboss-web>

This will route traffic to the Alias mapped in your server.xml file. Now, try to go to your new subhosted website and it should work like a champ. If it doesn't, post me a comment.