Attempting to use the Tomcat 5.5 which ships with VDT 1.8.1 with the HTTP+proxj_ajp of Centos 5, I came across a strange error. The default port of the Tomcat AJP (8943) does not work with tomcat. ie, this does not work, failing with Service Temporarily Unavailable.

server.xml

...
  <Service name="Catalina">
    <Connector address="127.0.0.1" port="8943"
               enableLookups="false" redirectPort="8443" protocol="AJP/1.3"
               tomcatAuthentication="false" />
...

proxy_ajp.conf:

...
        RewriteEngine On

        RewriteRule ^/icat/(.*) ajp://localhost:8943/icat/$1 [L,P]
        RewriteRule ^/mcatext/(.*) ajp://localhost:8943/mcatext/$1 [L,P]
        RewriteRule ^/tomcat/(.*) ajp://localhost:8943/$1 [L,P]

However, if I revert to the normal AJP port of 8009, all is fine.

server.xml

...
  <Service name="Catalina">
    <Connector address="127.0.0.1" port="8009"
               enableLookups="false" redirectPort="8443" protocol="AJP/1.3"
               tomcatAuthentication="false" />
...

proxy_ajp.conf:

...
        RewriteEngine On

        RewriteRule ^/icat/(.*) ajp://localhost:8009/icat/$1 [L,P]
        RewriteRule ^/mcatext/(.*) ajp://localhost:8009/mcatext/$1 [L,P]
        RewriteRule ^/tomcat/(.*) ajp://localhost:8009/$1 [L,P]