How to properly setup Apache HTTP - Tomcat configuration

Question

I've built a setup with Apache HTTP and Tomcat, which communicate to each other via mod_proxy. I've pasted the configuration I use below. The problem I experience is session loss and I think this has to do with improper proxy configuration. I read lots of articles but still can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

httpd.conf:

<VirtualHost MACHINE_IP:80>
  ServerName www.mydomain.com
  ProxyRequests Off
  ProxyPass /apps/my_app http://MACHINE_IP:8080/my_app
  ProxyPassReverse /apps/my_app http://MACHINE_IP:8080/my_app
  Header set P3P "CP=\"HONK\""
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost MACHINE_IP:443>
  ServerName www.mydomain.com
  ProxyRequests Off
  ProxyPass /apps/my_app https://MACHINE_IP:8443/my_app
  ProxyPassReverse /apps/my_app https://MACHINE_IP:8443/my_app

  Header set P3P "CP=\"HONK\""
</VirtualHost>

Tomcat (on MACHINE_IP) runs on usual ports 8080 and 8843 and is configured as follows (I think this is the default configuration):

<Server port="8005" shutdown="SHUTDOWN">

  <Service name="Catalina">

    <Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
               connectionTimeout="20000"
               redirectPort="8443"
               />

    <Connector port="8443" protocol="HTTP/1.1" SSLEnabled="true"
               maxThreads="150" scheme="https" secure="true"
               clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS"
                keystoreFile="cert/tomcat.keystore"
                keystorePass="password"
               />

    <Connector port="8009" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" />

    <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost">

      <Host name="localhost"  appBase="webapps"
            unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true">

      </Host>
    </Engine>
  </Service>
</Server>

Strange thing is that when I configure any proxyName and proxyPort in server.xml, and also domain name to the Host, everything stops working. The above sample of server.xml is working, but for some reason there is a session loss.

Answer 1

You are seeing session loss because you have changed the context path for the application with

ProxyPass /apps/my_app https://MACHINE_IP:8443/my_app

from /apps/my_app in httpd to /my_app in Tomcat. That measn Tomcat will issue sessions cookies for the path /my_app which doesn;t match what the client is requesting form httpd.

To fix this use ProxyPassReverseCookiePath