Hosting In-House Books and Apps on a Tomcat Instance

Updated: 15 April 2022
Product: Jamf Pro

Before you distribute an in-house app or book, you should consider where it will be hosted. One of the hosting locations you can use is a web server. The app or book must be hosted on the web server before you distribute it.

If you host Jamf Pro on your own server and do not use a separate web server for file hosting, you can use your Tomcat instance to host in-house content as described in this article.

  1. Create a directory named inhouse in the Tomcat webapps ROOT directory. The location of the Tomcat webapps ROOT directory varies depending on the platform and the way you installed Jamf Pro.

    • If you used the Jamf Pro Installer to install Jamf Pro, the directory is located at:

      • Linux: /usr/local/JSS/Tomcat/webapps/ROOT/

      • Windows: C:\Program Files\JSS\Tomcat\webapps\ROOT\

      • Mac: /Library/JSS/Tomcat/webapps/ROOT/

    • If you did not use the Jamf Pro Installer to install Jamf Pro, the directory is located at:

      • Linux: /var/lib/tomcat8/webapps/ROOT/

      • Windows: C:\Program Files\Apache Tomcat8\webapps\ROOT\

      • Mac: /Library/Tomcat/webapps/ROOT/

  2. Place the in-house book file (.ibooks, .epub, or .pdf) or in-house app file (.ipa) in the inhouse directory.
  3. (Windows) The .ibooks file format will not work on Windows servers by default. You must modify the web.xml file to distribute .ibooks files.

    1. Open the web.xml file from the following directory: /JSS/tomcat/conf/web.xml

    2. Add the following line below the last <mim-mapping> key instance:
      <mime-mapping>
<extension>ibooks</extension>
<mime-type>application/x-ibooks+zip</mime-type>
</mime-mapping>
  4. (Windows) The .ipa file format will not work on Windows servers by default. You must modify the web.xml file to distribute .ipa files.

    1. Open the web.xml file from the following directory: /JSS/tomcat/conf/web.xml

    2. Add the following line below the last <mim-mapping> key instance:
      <mime-mapping>
<extension>ipa</extension>
<mime-type>application/octet-stream</mime-type>
</mime-mapping>
      Note:

      After upgrading Jamf Pro, you must re-add or back up the inhouse folder and the web.xml file since they are not preserved.

Additional Information

For information on distributing in-house books or apps using Jamf Pro, see the following sections in the Jamf Pro Documentation:

The URL for an in-house book or app hosted on the Tomcat instance that hosts Jamf Pro is https://jss.instancename.com:8443/inhouse/filename.