Accessing Tomcat on ocelot

There is a problem at the school with the way that user directories are mounted and the way that Tomcat tries to access your user directory.

User Directories

Your user directory is accessed via /aul/homes/username. Your directory is not available all the time. When you make an access through /aul/homes/username, the school's operating system makes your directory available for about five minutes. After five minutes of inactivity, your user directory will be made unavailable. It is similar to a screen saver: after an inactive period, your screen changes to the screen saver - when there is activity, then your screen reappears.

Tomcat Access

The problem with Tomcat is that it doesn't play by the rules. It doesn't access your directory via /aul/homes. Instead, it goes directly to the disk where your data is stored. Most of the time this data is unavailable. Since Tomcat doesn't use /aul/homes, the operating system does not make your data available.

Solution

The solution is to first make a reference to some file using /aul/homes/username before calling Tomcat. The simplest way to accomplish this is to create a home page on the www.aul.fiu.edu server and to add a hypertext link from that page to your Tomcat host.

• Make a subdirectory of ~ named public_html, change its mode to 705.
• Create an index.html file in the public_html directory, change its mode to 604.
• Add a hypertext link in this file to the root of your student host on Tomcat.
• If you cannot access your host through the normal URL, then access one of these URLs and follow the hypertext link that you created to your host..
  (replace username with your user name; notice there is no port specified in these URLs)
  http://ocelot.aul.fiu.edu/~username
http://www.aul.fiu.edu/~username
http://studentXX.cgs4854.cs.fiu.edu/~username