InfoCenter Home > 6.6.45: Administering WebSphere plug-ins for Web serversThe WebSphere Application Server works with a Web server to handle requests for Web applications. The Web server and application server communicate using the WebSphere plug-in for the Web server. When you install WebSphere Application Server, it modifies the Web server configuration file automatically to establish the plug-in. The exception is for installations using Domino Server, in which you need to perform manual steps to update the Web server configuration file after installing WebSphere Application Server. For more information, see "Modifications to Web server configurations during product installation." Administering Web serversRefer to your Web server documentation as the ultimate source of information about administering your Web server. See also the subtopics of this article. Ensure that Web servers are configured to perform operations required by Web applications, such as GET and POST. Typically, this involves setting a directive in the Web server configuration file (such as httpd.conf for IBM HTTP Server). Refer to the Web server documentation for instructions. If an operation is not enabled when a servlet or JSP page requiring the operation is accessed, an error message is displayed, such as this one from IBM HTTP Server: HTTP method POST is not supported by this URL. The internal HTTP transport and the Web server plug-inA Web server and WebSphere plug-in for the Web server are required for use in a production environment, for performance reasons. But strictly speaking, they are not required in order to start the application server or the administrative console. In a test or development environment, you might want to use the internal HTTP transport described in the transport administration overview, instead of the Web server plug-in and Web server. The remainder of this article and its sub-topics (6.6.45.*) discuss the Web server plug-in. Administering WebSphere plug-ins for Web serversThe remainder of this article discusses the main plug-in tasks and when to perform them:
Automatically triggering a regeneration of the plug-in configurationMost of the time, you will perform administrative tasks without even thinking about dynamic plug-in configuration. The configuration is regenerated automatically every time you stop an application server process and start it again, as explained below. The following general steps cause plug-ins to be regenerated automatically:
Now the objects for which you made the configuration changes are operating with the new values you specified. The Web servers are aware of the changes, too. Manually triggering a regeneration of the plug-in configurationThe WebSphere administrative console supplies a manual way to force plug-in configurations to update (regenerate) themselves. For a summary of the occassions on which to update the plug-in configuration, see the instructions for regenerating the plug-in. Time required for plug-in regeneration Regenerating the configuration might take a while to complete. After it is finished, all objects in the administrative domain will use their newest settings, of which the Web server is now aware. Whether triggered manually or occurring automatically, plug-in regeneration requires about 30 - 60 seconds to complete, when the application server product is on the same physical machine (node) as the Web server. In other cases, it takes more time. The delay is important because it determines how soon the new plug-in configuration will take effect. Suppose you add a new served path for a servlet, then regenerate the plug-in configurations. The regeneration requires 40 seconds, after which a user should be able to access the servlet by the new served path. You can see how dynamic plug-in configuration enables you to make newly configured resources available to users right away. For an OSE plug-in, the length of the delay is determined by the ose.refresh.interval setting in the IBM WebSphere Application Server bootstrap.properties file. The plug-ins poll the disk at this interval to see whether their configurations have changed. To regenerate the plug-in configurations requires twice the refresh interval. In a development environment in which you are frequently changing settings in the administrative console, it is recommended you set the refresh interval to 3 to 5 seconds. In a production environment, set a longer refresh interval, perhaps as long as 30 minutes, depending on the frequency of changes. Example of regenerating the plug-in configuration After using the administrative console to make configuration changes that involve the served paths of Web applications, stop the affected application servers and start them again to trigger an automatic regeneration of the plug-in configuration files. When you trigger the regeneration of the plug-in configuration:
Manually editing the plug-in configurationThe Web server plug-in property reference describes the location of the plug-in configuration files. For the OSE plug-in configuration files, you should always use the WebSphere administrative console to modify the files, rather than modifying them directly. If you directly edit the files, the results cannot be guaranteed. It is likely your changes will be overwritten because the product periodically performs automatic updates of these files. Sometimes you might find it useful to view the OSE plug-in configuration files. For example, the files can reveal which requests are being handled by the servlet redirector (using RMI-IIOP), and which are being handled on the machine local to the Web server (using an OSE transport). |
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