The Apache Tomcat Connectors - Miscellaneous Documentation

The primary mechanism for support is through the JK documentation included in the doc directory. Documentation is also available on the Apache Tomcat web site devoted to the Apache Tomcat Connectors Project For additional help, the best resource is the Tomcat Users Discussion list. You should start by searching the mail list archive before you post questions to the list. If you are unable to locate the answer to your question in the archive, you can post questions about JK to the user list for assistance. Make sure that you include the version of your web server, that you are using as well as the platform you are running on and go here to determine how to subscribe to tomcat mailing list.

Now that JK moved to the tomcat-connectors repository, the source and the binaries for JK can be downloaded from a mirror at the Tomcat Connectors (mod_jk, mod_jk2) Downloads page.

JK is a project covering web servers to Tomcat connectors.

Apache HTTP Server support is implemented on JK, using a plugin called the mod_jk module.

Microsoft IIS support is implemented on JK, using a plugin called the ISAPI redirector.

iPlanet Web Server support is implemented on JK, using a plugin called the NSAPI redirector.

For JK 1.2.x, you should read:

• Quick Start
• Apache HTTP Server and JK (mod_jk)
• Microsoft IIS and JK (ISAPI redirector)
• iPlanet Web Server and JK (NSAPI redirector)
• Workers configuration

For more detailed information, have a look at the Reference Guide. You could also try searching the mailing list archives for "JK" or look at the source.

ajp13 is the standard. The old ajp12 is deprecated and ajp14 is experimental.

Also ajp13 is supported by all Apache Tomcat versions starting with Tomcat 3.2 and by other servlet engines like Jetty and JBoss.

The ajp13 protocol uses persistant connections where the traffic could be null if there is no request to be sent to Tomcat. Firewalls use to drop inactive connections and will make your web server and Tomcat think the connection is valid.

Starting with JK 1.2.0, a socket_keepalive property as been added to ajp13 settings, and you should take a look at it in Workers HowTo and workers.properties reference. If nothing else helps, you can try JkOptions +DisableReuse, but this will have strong performance implications.

Under heavy load, the Apache HTTP Server creates many children to handle the load, which will in turn create many connections to Tomcat to forward the requests they should handle. The Apache HTTP Server will normally kill the children/threads when the load decreases. But if the load is still there and even if only Apache handles the requests, ie static contents, the children are kept and with them all the ajp13 connections, even if they are no more used.

To close connections after some time of inactivity you can use connection_pool_timeout, for more informations refer to workers.properties reference.

The ajp13 protocol keeps an open socket between Tomcat and Apache. Release of mod_jk present in Tomcat Connectors handles the network failure. But with very ancient releases of mod_jk, you may have to restart Apache as well.

Many versions of Apache use a modified API, known at Extended API, developed for use with the mod_ssl module. Starting with Apache 2.0 there is no more difference.

For example, Apache 1.3 present in certains recent Linux distributions include the mod_ssl module.

So if you got such 'Extended Apache', you need to use mod_jk.so-eapi.

You should use mod_jk.so-noeapi only for 'Standard Apache' (ie without mod_ssl).

It's wise to avoid using EAPI modules on STD API Apache or to use standard API modules on EAPI Apache. Allways be sure to have the mod_jk.so which match your version of Apache.

It's related to Apache EAPI, the message 'mod_jk.so is garbled - perhaps this is not an Apache module DSO ?' just told you, that your're trying to install a mod_jk.so DSO module that was compiled on an Apache using EAPI, like apache-mod_ssl or apache from Redhat distro 6.2/7.0 but your system use the standard Apache with normal API.

Also related to EAPI, the message '[warn] Loaded DSO /usr/lib/apache/mod_jk.so uses plain Apache 1.3 API, this module might crash under EAPI! (please recompile it with -DEAPI)', the mod_jk.so was compiled under normal Apache with standard API and you try to install the module on an Apache using EAPI.

APXS is a Perl script that is created when you build the Apache web server from source. Chances are that if you are getting these errors and you obtained Apache as a binary distribution, that APXS is not configured correctly for your system. Your best bet is to get the Apache source from the Apache HTTP Server homepage and build it yourself. Use the following for a basic build (read the Apache docs for other options):

[user@host] ~ $ cd /usr/local/src
[user@host] ~ $ gzip -dc apache_1.3.19.tar.gz|tar xvf -
[user@host] ~ $ cd apache_1.3.19
[user@host] ~ $ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache \
            --enable-module=most \
            --enable-shared=max
[user@host] ~ $ make
[user@host] ~ $ make install

Note: The above steps assume that you downloaded the Apache source and placed it in your /usr/local/src directory.

Since the Apache API can change between versions, any Apache module contains the Apache API version used to compile the module. This is called the Magic Module Number.

At start time Apache checks that the version in the module header is compatible with the Apache server. If not it will deny to start and log an error.

Note that minor versions are forward compatible. If the module was compiled using Apache 2.x.y the resulting binary should work with any other version 2.x.z where z is bigger or equals to y. If you also need compatibility for versions 2.x.z with z smaller than y, use the configure flag --enable-api-compatibility. Note that the module compiled with any 2.x will never be compatible with 2.y for x different from y. In this case you need to recompile the module.

mod_jk works well with Apache 2.x from 2.0 to 2.4.

Important parts of the functionality of mod_jk have been reimplemented in the Apache HTTP Server modules mod_proxy_ajp and mod_proxy_balancer. These are part of the standard distribution of Apache 2.2 and 2.4. The new modules do not contain all features of mod_jk, but on the other hand you get the modules automatically with every new Apache release.

JNI support requires a multi-threaded environment which is not the general case for Apache 1.3. You should verify if Apache 1.3 has been build with thread support and if not you could add the the pthreads library to your httpd.conf file.

# Add pthread to Apache in httpd.conf
LoadModule "/usr/lib/libpthreads.so"

Also keep in mind that JNI is suited for multi-threaded servers and you should consider upgrading to Apache 2.x to support JNI.

Under Linux, you should set some environment variables BEFORE launching your Apache HTTP Server:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$jre/bin:$jre/bin/classic:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Also some Linux distributions have enabled a GLIBC feature called 'floating stacks' which may not works with kernel less than 2.4.10 on SMP machines. You should disable floating stacks by exporting an environment variable:

export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5

You could have to update your service scripts, ie /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd, to set these env vars before your Apache server starts.

configure assume you have some GNU tools already installed and configured for your system, and ad minima libtool.

Also some systems may have mixed cc and gcc setup which may make you puzzled when trying to link an Apache built with native c compiler with a jk/jk2 build with gcc.

In case the make processing doesn't work as expected, you should use a GNU make gmake.