Enable tomcat manager to reload shibboleth

It would be useful to be able to reload shibboleth without having to stop and restart tomcat. It is actually possible, but it is necessary to enable the manager servlet, which requires some steps.

First of all, install

sudo apt-get install tomcat5.5-admin

Then configure apache to handle /manager url though mod_ajp: add the following line in the ssl virtual host (then reload apache)

ProxyPass /manager ajp://localhost:8009/manager

Change permission to manager deployment fragment so it could be executed by tomcat5 user:

sudo chmod +x /etc/tomcat5/conf/Catalina/localhost/manager

Then create a principal able to access the manager web page: edit /etc/tomcat5.5/tomcat-users.xml by adding a user like:

<user username="admin" password="secret" roles="standard,manager"/>

(role admin is necessary to access to manager)

Then you can use the commands listed at:
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/manager-howto.html#Introduction

For instance, to reload shibboleth:

https://idp.server.com/manager/reload?path=/idp