[tomcat] Access Tomcat Manager App from different host

I have installed tomcat 9 on a remote sever and after starting it, it was brought up fine, I can access http://host_name:port_num and see tomcat hello page. But when I try to open manager app to see my deployed apps, I get 403 access denied, I already add roles in tomcat user xml as following:

<role rolename="manager"/>
<role rolename="manager-gui"/>
<role rolename="admin"/>
<user username="user" password="password" roles="admin,manager,manager-gui"/>

The error messages I saw is:

By default the Host Manager is only accessible from a browser running on the same machine as Tomcat. If you wish to modify this restriction, you'll need to edit the Host Manager's context.xml file.

How should I change context.xml file and get access to manager app?

This question is related to tomcat

The answer is


For Tomcat v8.5.4 and above, the file <tomcat>/webapps/manager/META-INF/context.xml has been adjusted:

<Context antiResourceLocking="false" privileged="true" >
    <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve"
         allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" />
</Context>

Change this file to comment the Valve:

<Context antiResourceLocking="false" privileged="true" >
    <!--
    <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve"
         allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" />
    -->
</Context>

After that, refresh your browser (not need to restart Tomcat), you can see the manager page.


To access the tomcat manager from different machine you have to follow bellow steps:

1. Update conf/tomcat-users.xml file with user and some roles:

<role rolename="manager-gui"/>
 <role rolename="manager-script"/>
 <role rolename="manager-jmx"/>
 <role rolename="manager-status"/>
 <user username="admin" password="admin" roles="manager-gui,manager-script,manager-jmx,manager-status"/>

Here admin user is assigning roles="manager-gui,manager-script,manager-jmx,manager-status".

Here tomcat user and password is : admin

2. Update webapps/manager/META-INF/context.xml file (Allowing IP address):

Default configuration:

<Context antiResourceLocking="false" privileged="true" >
  
  <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve"
         allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" />
  
  <Manager sessionAttributeValueClassNameFilter="java\.lang\.(?:Boolean|Integer|Long|Number|String)|org\.apache\.catalina\.filters\.CsrfPreventionFilter\$LruCache(?:\$1)?|java\.util\.(?:Linked)?HashMap"/>
</Context>

Here in Valve it is allowing only local machine IP start with 127.\d+.\d+.\d+ .

2.a : Allow specefic IP:

<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve"
         allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1|YOUR.IP.ADDRESS.HERE" />

Here you just replace |YOUR.IP.ADDRESS.HERE with your IP address

2.b : Allow all IP:

<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve"
         allow=".*" />

Here using allow=".*" you are allowing all IP.

Thanks :)


Following two configuration is working for me.

1 .tomcat-users.xml details
--------------------------------
  <role rolename="manager-gui"/>
  <role rolename="manager-script"/>
  <role rolename="manager-jmx"/>
  <role rolename="manager-status"/>
  <role rolename="admin-gui"/>
  <role rolename="admin-script"/>
  <role rolename="tomcat"/>


  <user  username="tomcat"  password="tomcat" roles="tomcat"/>

  <user  username="admin"  password="admin" roles="admin-gui"/>

  <user  username="adminscript"  password="adminscrip" roles="admin-script"/>

  <user  username="tomcat"  password="s3cret" roles="manager-gui"/>
  <user  username="status"  password="status" roles="manager-status"/>

  <user  username="both"    password="both"   roles="manager-gui,manager-status"/>

  <user  username="script"  password="script" roles="manager-script"/>
  <user  username="jmx"     password="jmx"    roles="manager-jmx"/>

2. context.xml  of <tomcat>/webapps/manager/META-INF/context.xml and 
<tomcat>/webapps/host-manager/META-INF/context.xml
------------------------------------------------------------------------
<Context antiResourceLocking="false" privileged="true" >

  <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve"
         allow=".*" />
  <Manager sessionAttributeValueClassNameFilter="java\.lang\.(?:Boolean|Integer|Long|Number|String)|org\.apache\.catalina\.filters\.CsrfPreventionFilter\$LruCache(?:\$1)?|java\.util\.(?:Linked)?HashMap"/>