How to change the ROOT application?

Question

I\'m trying to change the default application of a Tomcat 6 webserver to a different application than \"ROOT\" (inside webapps folder). What is the best way to do this?

Answer 1

Adding a <Context> tag in the <Host> tag in server.xml for Tomcat 6 will resolve the problem.

If you use path="" empty you can use a URL like http://localhost/first.do.

In the context tag set attributes docBase="E:\struts-ITRCbook\myStrutsbook" and reloadable="true", then end the context tag.

It should look something like this:

<Host name="localhost"  appBase="webapps" 
        unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"
        xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false">
    <Context path="" docBase="E:\struts-ITRCbook\myStrutsbook" reloadable="true">
    </Context>
</Host>

Answer 2

In Tomcat 7 (under Windows server) I didn't add or edit anything to any configuration file. I just renamed the ROOT folder to something else and renamed my application folder to ROOT and it worked fine.

Answer 3

In Tomcat 7 with these changes, i'm able to access myAPP at / and ROOT at /ROOT

<Context path="" docBase="myAPP"/>
<Context path="ROOT" docBase="ROOT"/>

Add above to the <Host> section in server.xml

Answer 4

According to the Apache Tomcat docs, you can change the application by creating a ROOT.xml file. See this for more info:

http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/config/context.html

"The default web application may be defined by using a file called ROOT.xml."

Answer 5

I've got a problem when configured Tomcat' server.xml and added Context element. He just doesn't want to use my config: http://www.oreillynet.com/onjava/blog/2006/12/configuration_antipatterns_tom.html

If you're in a Unix-like system:

1. mv $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/ROOT $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/___ROOT
2. ln -s $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/your_project $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/ROOT

Done.

Works for me.

Answer 6

You can do this in a slightly hack-y way by:

1. Stop Tomcat
2. Move ROOT.war aside and rm -rf webapps/ROOT
3. Copy the webapp you want to webapps/ROOT.war
4. Start Tomcat