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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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If you use Tomcat 7, read the following:
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/config/context.html#Resource_Definitions
commented Dec 15, 2013 by Sonu Jindal
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.
commented Dec 15, 2013 by anonymous

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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