17.3. Configure Apache to load mod

17.3. Configure Apache to load mod_jk

Modify APACHE_HOME/conf/httpd.conf and add a single line at the end of the file:

# Include mod_jk's specific configuration file  
Include conf/mod-jk.conf

Next, create a new file named APACHE_HOME/conf/mod-jk.conf:

# Load mod_jk module
# Specify the filename of the mod_jk lib
LoadModule jk_module modules/mod_jk.so
 
# Where to find workers.properties
JkWorkersFile conf/workers.properties

# Where to put jk logs
JkLogFile logs/mod_jk.log
 
# Set the jk log level [debug/error/info]
JkLogLevel info 
 
# Select the log format
JkLogStampFormat  "[%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y]"
 
# JkOptions indicates to send SSK KEY SIZE
JkOptions +ForwardKeySize +ForwardURICompat -ForwardDirectories
 
# JkRequestLogFormat
JkRequestLogFormat "%w %V %T"
               
# Mount your applications
JkMount /application/* loadbalancer
 
# You can use external file for mount points.
# It will be checked for updates each 60 seconds.
# The format of the file is: /url=worker
# /examples/*=loadbalancer
JkMountFile conf/uriworkermap.properties               

# Add shared memory.
# This directive is present with 1.2.10 and
# later versions of mod_jk, and is needed for
# for load balancing to work properly
JkShmFile logs/jk.shm 
              
# Add jkstatus for managing runtime data
<Location /jkstatus/>
    JkMount status
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 127.0.0.1
</Location>

Please note that two settings are very important:

The LoadModule directive must reference the mod_jk library you have downloaded in the previous section. You must indicate the exact same name with the "modules" file path prefix.
The JkMount directive tells Apache which URLs it should forward to the mod_jk module (and, in turn, to the Servlet containers). In the above file, all requests with URL path /application/* are sent to the mod_jk load-balancer. This way, you can configure Apache to server static contents (or PHP contents) directly and only use the loadbalancer for Java applications. If you only use mod_jk as a loadbalancer, you can also forward all URLs (i.e., /*) to mod_jk.

In addition to the JkMount directive, you can also use the JkMountFile directive to specify a mount points configuration file, which contains multiple Tomcat forwarding URL mappings. You just need to create a uriworkermap.properties file in the APACHE_HOME/conf directory. The format of the file is /url=worker_name. To get things started, paste the following example into the file you created:

# Simple worker configuration file

# Mount the Servlet context to the ajp13 worker
/jmx-console=loadbalancer
/jmx-console/*=loadbalancer
/web-console=loadbalancer
/web-console/*=loadbalancer

This will configure mod_jk to forward requests to /jmx-console and /web-console to Tomcat.

You will most probably not change the other settings in mod_jk.conf. They are used to tell mod_jk where to put its logging file, which logging level to use and so on.