Removing Tomcat context from URLs for a virtual host (mod_jk, mod_rewrite)

Question

Hi All,

I have a single Tomcat instance containing a number of webapps, each accessible via it's /Context. Tomcat is behind httpd (actually Debian Apache2), configured with virtual hosts to serve each app/Context. Tomcat connectivity is with mod_jk.

This works fine when I don't care about removing the context from urls: when the root of a virtual domain is requested, the requested is redirected to domain.com/Context.

However for one app I do want to remove the context. I believe this can be done by using mod_rewrite, and passing the re-written url to mod_jk for passing on to the correct Tomcat context. So my Debian Apache2 sites-available file looks like this:

NameVirtualHost *

<VirtualHost *>
    ServerName domain.be

    DocumentRoot /home/webapp/app/static/domain/

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /Context/$1 [L,PT]
    RewriteLog "/var/log/apache2/domain-rewrite.log"
    RewriteLogLevel 4

    JkLogFile     /var/log/apache2/domain-mod_jk.log
    JkLogLevel    debug
    JkLogStampFormat "[%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y] "
    JkMount /Context w1
    JKMount /Context* w1
    JkOptions +ForwardURICompat

    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/domain_error.log
    CustomLog /var/log/apache2/domain_access.log combined
    LogLevel warn

</VirtualHost>

According to the docs, the [PT] flag and +ForwardURICompat options should result in the rewritten URL being passed to jk_mod. However that doesn't seem to be happening.

The URL is being re-written, but it seems as if mod_jk is ignoring it: A request for domain.be/Context for example gets rewritten as /Context/Context - but is still handed to mod_jk as /Context.

Any ideas? Incidentally, I cannot use mod_proxy at the moment.

Thanks