Running Tomcat from CDROM using Stunnix Advanced Web Server

Stunnix Advanced Web Server allows the running of Tomcat sites from cdrom on Windows, MacOS X and Linux. Tomcat will run the same way from CD or DVD on any of these platforms. Static content can be served by the main web server (implemented in C) for speed purposes. Tomcat site appears to the user on the same port as the main web server - when a request comes to a resource that should be served by Tomcat, the main web server receives it, executes the same request to Tomcat, and sends the content that Tomcat returned to the user.

Since Tomcat has to unpack deployed apps located in the webapps directory, the entire content of the 'webapps' Tomcat directory is copied from cdrom to the user's HDD each time the CD with Tomcat is run. So in order to minimize the amount of data to be copied from that media, the recommendation is to copy as much static content as possible to the document directory of the main web server. the user tells the Stunnix Advanced Web Server to handle some content by the main web server by specifying the URL path prefixes in the special entry of the CDBuilder interface (and by putting that content into the document root of the main web server).

Once the user tells the main cdrom-based webserver to stop, Tomcat is also stopped along with the main web server and database servers.

The fact that the user makes requests only to the port of the main web server (and even does not know the port Tomcat listens to) allows easy integration of several technologies into the same CD - e.g., mod_perl, PHP and Tomcat, thus making them appear as a consistent website.

Tomcat successfully runs from CDROM even if the user that started the CD has no adminstrator permissions. The ports that various Tomcat connectors will listen to are computed automatically at startup of the main webserver.

One can adapt any version of Tomcat for running from CDROM. Please contact our support for a complete set of free instructions.

There are different Java implementations available on our site for use on the CDROM from which Tomcat has to be run - from complete JDK to JRE of different versions for different platforms; the user can pick either of the installed packages to use on CD. One can even prepare their own package for use on CD/DVD with the Tomcat site (mainly it consists only in giving the proper name of the directory where Java is located!). Please contact our support for a complete set of free instructions.

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