Tomcat 7 Restricted (ContainerServlet) error

Question

I have been stuck on this one for a while. I am trying to access the ContainerServlet I implemented using HttpClient with Tomcat 7. I keep getting the error message "Restricted(ContainerServlet)". I have added Basic Authentication and tried to set it up just like the built in Host-Manager application with no luck.

My HostManagerServlet starts with:

public class HostManagerServlet
extends HttpServlet implements ContainerServlet {...

My web.xml contains:

<servlet>
            <servlet-name>virtualHostCreator</servlet-name>
            <servlet-class>com.eatmyfish.servlets.HostManagerServlet</servlet-class>
          </servlet>
          <servlet-mapping>
            <servlet-name>virtualHostCreator</servlet-name>
            <url-pattern>/virtualhostcreator/*</url-pattern>
          </servlet-mapping>
    <security-constraint>
        <web-resource-collection>
          <web-resource-name>HostManager commands</web-resource-name>
          <url-pattern>/virtualhostcreator/*</url-pattern>
        </web-resource-collection>
        <auth-constraint>
           <!-- NOTE:  This role is not present in the default users file -->
           <role-name>admin-script</role-name>
        </auth-constraint>
      </security-constraint>
      <security-constraint>
        <web-resource-collection>
          <web-resource-name>HTMLHostManager commands</web-resource-name>
          <url-pattern>/virtualhostcreator/*</url-pattern>
        </web-resource-collection>
        <auth-constraint>
           <!-- NOTE:  This role is not present in the default users file -->
           <role-name>admin-gui</role-name>
        </auth-constraint>
      </security-constraint>
<login-config>
    <auth-method>BASIC</auth-method>
  </login-config>
<security-role>
    <description>
      The role that is required to log in to the Host Manager Application HTML
      interface
    </description>
    <role-name>admin-gui</role-name>
  </security-role>
  <security-role>
    <description>
      The role that is required to log in to the Host Manager Application text
      interface
    </description>
    <role-name>admin-script</role-name>
  </security-role>

My tomcat-users.xml contains:

.
.
.
<role rolename="admin-gui"/>
  <role rolename="admin-script"/>
  <role rolename="manager-gui"/>
  <role rolename="tomcat"/>
  <role rolename="role1"/>
  <user username="tomcat" password="tomcat" roles="tomcat,admin-gui,admin-script,manager-gui"/>
.
.
.

The code that makes the HttpClient call (I've tried a few different approaches):

Approach One -

String url = environment.getProperty("baseurl");
        url += "virtualhostcreator/createVirualHost?name="+group.getGroupName();
        HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();

        HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet(url);
        httpget.addHeader(BasicScheme.authenticate(
                 new UsernamePasswordCredentials("tomcat", "tomcat"),
                 "UTF-8", false));
        HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpget);

Approach Two -

String url = environment.getProperty("baseurl");
        url += "virtualhostcreator/createVirualHost?name="+group.getGroupName();
        DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        httpclient.getCredentialsProvider().setCredentials(
                new AuthScope("localhost", 8080),
                new UsernamePasswordCredentials("tomcat", "tomcat"));
        // Create AuthCache instance
        AuthCache authCache = new BasicAuthCache();
        // Generate BASIC scheme object and add it to the local
        // auth cache
        HttpHost targetHost = new HttpHost("localhost", 8080, "http");
        BasicScheme basicAuth = new BasicScheme();
        authCache.put(targetHost, basicAuth);

        // Add AuthCache to the execution context
        BasicHttpContext localcontext = new BasicHttpContext();
        localcontext.setAttribute("http.auth.auth-cache", authCache);

        HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet(url);

        HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(targetHost, httpget,localcontext);

The error's stacktrace:

SEVERE: Allocate exception for servlet virtualHostCreator
java.lang.SecurityException: Restricted (ContainerServlet) class com.eatmyfish.servlets.HostManagerServlet
    at org.apache.catalina.core.DefaultInstanceManager.checkAccess(DefaultInstanceManager.java:536)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.DefaultInstanceManager.loadClassMaybePrivileged(DefaultInstanceManager.java:509)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.DefaultInstanceManager.newInstance(DefaultInstanceManager.java:124)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.loadServlet(StandardWrapper.java:1136)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.allocate(StandardWrapper.java:857)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:135)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:169)
    at org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:581)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:168)
    at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:98)
    at org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve.invoke(AccessLogValve.java:927)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:118)
    at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:407)
    at org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process(AbstractHttp11Processor.java:987)
    at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:579)
    at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(JIoEndpoint.java:307)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1110)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:603)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722)

Any ideas what I am doing wrong? I cannot get past the Restricted(ContainerServlet) error.

Answer 1

I had a similar problem in Tomcat 7 and was able to work around it by editing the top-level element in ./conf/context.xml to look like

<Context privileged="true">

What I can't figure out is how Tomcat's own manager servlets are able to load without this configuration. Anybody have any clues?

Answer 2

I found the answer. I needed to set privileged=true in the context of the host inside server.xml