tomcat Getting started with tomcat

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Installation or Setup

Detailed instructions on getting tomcat set up or installed.

Installing Tomcat as a service on Ubuntu

This example demonstrates how to install Tomcat as a service on Ubuntu using the *.tar.gz releases of both Tomcat as well as Java.

1. Install the Java Runtime Environment (JRE)

1. Download the desired jre .tar.gz release
2. Extract to /opt/
   This will create a directory /opt/jre1.Xxxx/
3. Create a symbolic link to the java home directory:
   cd /opt; sudo ln -s jre1.Xxxxx java
4. add the JRE to the JAVA_HOME environment variable:
   sudo vim /etc/environment
JAVA_HOME="/opt/java"

2. Install Tomcat:

1. Download tomcat in a .tar.gz (or similiar) release.
2. Create a tomcat system user:
   sudo useradd -r tomcat
3. Extract to /opt/
   This will create a directory /opt/apache-tomcat-XXXX
   assign this directory to the tomcat system user and group:
   sudo chown -R tomcat ./*
sudo chgrp -R tomcat ./*
4. Create the CATALINA_HOME environment variable:
   sudo vim /etc/environment
CATALINA_HOME="/opt/tomcat"
5. Add admin user in tomcat-users.xml
sudo vim /opt/tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml
   and add something like <user username="admin" password="adminpw" roles="manager-gui">
   between the <tomcat-users> ... </tomcat-users> tags

3. Making Tomcat boot at startup

Add a script in /etc/init.d called tomcat and make it executable. The content of the script can look something like:

RETVAL=$?
CATALINA_HOME="/opt/tomcat"

case "$1" in
 start)
    if [ -f $CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh ];
      then
        echo $"Starting Tomcat"
        sudo -u tomcat $CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh
    fi
    ;;
 stop)
    if [ -f $CATALINA_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh ];
      then
        echo $"Stopping Tomcat"
        sudo -u tomcat $CATALINA_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh
    fi
    ;;
 *)
    echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop}"
    exit 1
    ;;
esac

exit $RETVAL
 

To make it start on boot, run: sudo update-rc.d tomcat defaults

You can also add a bash line to /etc/rc.local for example service tomcat start

Changing classpath or other Tomcat related environment variables:

Edit the file $CATALINA_HOME/bin/setenv.sh and add the properties in here, for example: CLASSPATH=/additional/class/directories