Tomcat - "Directory Listing" or serving static pages

Question

I am new to Tomcat and web development so please forgive me.

I am on a Linux box with Tomcat 6 running. I need a directory on the box exposed and browsable via a web browser.

I can get it to work by creating an xml file (path and docBase) in the Catalina/localhost/ directory and enabling "directory listing" in the Tomcat's web.xml file. But from what I heard, that is inefficient.

How do I just expose a single directory for my specific needs without affecting other deployed apps?

Thanks

Answer 1

You can simply expose that directory to be browsable via Apache in .conf file, completely outside of TomCat (TomCat is an application server sitting on top of an apache Web server, and the function you want is a web server's function).

Answer 2

You "just expose a single directory for my specific needs without affecting other deployed apps" "by creating an xml file (path and docBase) in the Catalina/localhost/ directory and enabling "directory listing" in the Tomcat's web.xml file."

What does "inefficient" mean? Compared to what? Under what conditions? What is your expected load?