Access Management 7.3.2

Apache Tomcat

AM examples often use Apache Tomcat (Tomcat) as the deployment container. In these examples, Tomcat is installed on openam.example.com and listens on the default ports without a Java Security Manager enabled.

JVM startup

AM core services require a minimum JVM heap size of 1 GB, and a metadata space size of up to 256 MB. If you are evaluating AM and using the embedded DS, you require at least a 2 GB heap, as 50% of that space is allocated to DS. See Prepare the Java environment for details.

Set a CATALINA_OPTS environment variable with the appropriate tuning for your environment. For example, add the following in your setenv file:

  • Linux

  • Windows

In $CATALINA_BASE/bin/setenv.sh:

export CATALINA_OPTS="$CATALINA_OPTS -server -Xmx2g -XX:MetaspaceSize=256m -XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=256m"

In $CATALINA_BASE/bin/setenv.bat:

set "CATALINA_OPTS=%CATALINA_OPTS% -server -Xmx2g -XX:MetaspaceSize=256m -XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=256m"

Some versions of Microsoft Edge support the Expires header attribute instead of the Max-Age header attribute, which may cause SAML 2.0 and agent logout sequences to fail.

If you have set the org.apache.catalina.STRICT_SERVLET_COMPLIANCE Tomcat property to true, add the org.apache.tomcat.util.http.ServerCookie.ALWAYS_ADD_EXPIRE property in the setenv file, to add the Expires attribute to the headers:

  • Linux

  • Windows

In $CATALINA_BASE/bin/setenv.sh:

export CATALINA_OPTS="$CATALINA_OPTS -server -Xmx2g -XX:MetaspaceSize=256m -XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=256m \
-Dorg.apache.tomcat.util.http.ServerCookie.ALWAYS_ADD_EXPIRES=true"

In $CATALINA_BASE/bin/setenv.bat:

set "CATALINA_OPTS=%CATALINA_OPTS% -server -Xmx2g -XX:MetaspaceSize=256m -XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=256m -
-Dorg.apache.tomcat.util.http.ServerCookie.ALWAYS_ADD_EXPIRES=true"

Slashes in resource names

Some AM resources have names that can contain slash characters (/), for example, in policy names, application names, and SAML v2.0 entities. These slash characters can cause unexpected behavior when running AM on Tomcat.

In development environments, a possible workaround is to configure Tomcat to allow encoded slash characters by adding the org.apache.tomcat.util.buf.UDecoder.ALLOW_ENCODED_SLASH=true property to the CATALINA_OPTS variable; for example:

  • Linux

  • Windows

In $CATALINA_BASE/bin/setenv.sh:

export CATALINA_OPTS="$CATALINA_OPTS -server -Xmx2g -XX:MetaspaceSize=256m -XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=256m \
-Dorg.apache.tomcat.util.buf.UDecoder.ALLOW_ENCODED_SLASH=true"

In $CATALINA_BASE/bin/setenv.bat:

set "CATALINA_OPTS=%CATALINA_OPTS% -server -Xmx2g -XX:MetaspaceSize=256m -XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=256m -
 -Dorg.apache.tomcat.util.buf.UDecoder.ALLOW_ENCODED_SLASH=true"

Do not enable org.apache.tomcat.util.buf.UDecoder.ALLOW_ENCODED_SLASH when running AM in production as it introduces a security risk.

Learn more in How do I safely enable the org.apache.tomcat.util.buf.UDecoder.ALLOW_ENCODED_SLASH setting in PingAM? .

Set the cookie domain name value to an empty string (for host-only cookies) or to any non-top level domain (for domain cookies).

For example, if you install AM on openam.example.com, you can set the cookie domain name to example.com.

Because host-only cookies are more secure than domain cookies, you should use host-only cookies unless you have a good business case for using domain cookies.

Refer to Install an instance to configure the cookie domain during installation.

Log request times

Tomcat provides components called valves that can be configured to track access to resources. The Access Log Valve outputs information about request activity to log files, for you to analyze or use when troubleshooting.

To record request times in the Access Log Valve log, configure the pattern attribute to include the following values:

  • %D - Time taken to send an entire request, in millis. This is the total processing time and may be affected by network conditions.

  • %F - Time taken to commit the response, in millis (not available in Tomcat 7 or earlier).

Example Valve element in server.xml:

<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" directory="logs"
       prefix="localhost_access_log" suffix=".txt"
       pattern="%h %l %u %t "%r" %s %b %D %F" />

For information about the Access Log Valve configuration, refer to the documentation for Tomcat 7.0, or Tomcat 8.0, which includes the %F value.

Encoding and security

ForgeRock recommends that you edit the Tomcat <Connector> configuration to set URIEncoding="UTF-8". UTF-8 URI encoding ensures that URL-encoded characters in the paths of URIs are correctly decoded by the container. This is particularly useful if your applications use the AM REST APIs and some identifiers, such as user names, contain special characters.

You should also ensure the sslProtocol property is set to TLS, which disables the potentially vulnerable SSL v3.0 protocol.

<Connector> configuration elements are found in the configuration file, /path/to/tomcat/conf/server.xml. The following excerpt shows an example <Connector> with the URIEncoding and sslProtocol attributes set appropriately:

<Connector port="8443" protocol="HTTP/1.1" SSLEnabled="true"
 maxThreads="150" scheme="https" secure="true"
 clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" URIEncoding="UTF-8" />

When you have finished setting up Apache Tomcat, you should enforce HTTPS connections to AM. For details, refer to Secure connections to the AM container.