Unusual environment from servlet hosting provider

[Mark Voorberg]

Hi,
I'm trying to deploy a JSP/Servlet application on my web hosting provider
that provides private JVM Tomcat 4.1 support.

The first problem is that their environment is setup very strange. The
WEB-INF folder is at the root of my domain.
e.g. www.MyDomain.com/WEB-INF/
They've blocked direct access to the folder, but that isn't the issue.

The second problem is that I can't run a servlet without including
"/servlets/*" in the path.
When running my app, the path should look like
http://localhost/Timesheet/TimesheetServlet so there's a smooth transition
between JSP & the servlet.

While they have blocked access to the folder, I don't want to unzip the war
file into my root folder.

Am I missing something or is this environment fundamentally flawed?

Thanks,
Mark Voorberg
www.objectclarity.com

 

[Keith Bjorndahl]

Hello Mark.

Hi,
I'm trying to deploy a JSP/Servlet application on my web hosting provider
that provides private JVM Tomcat 4.1 support.

The first problem is that their environment is setup very strange. The
WEB-INF folder is at the root of my domain.
e.g. www.MyDomain.com/WEB-INF/
They've blocked direct access to the folder, but that isn't the issue.

At first glance, it looks like you are probably sharing the Tomcat JVM
instead of having a private JVM...or if there is a Tomcat directory in
your account they may have a symbolic link from the webapps/ROOT
directory to your home directory to make "easier" for you.

The second problem is that I can't run a servlet without including
"/servlets/*" in the path.
When running my app, the path should look like
http://localhost/Timesheet/TimesheetServlet so there's a smooth transition
between JSP & the servlet.

This could happen if they are running Tomcat behind Apache or another
web server. In this case, your ISP should be able to have it pass all
requests on to Tomcat instead of just /servlet/* and /*.jsp and they
you can map all of the servlets that you like in the web.xml file.