Install Apache Tomcat 7 on Ubuntu 14.04

In this we will look at installing Apache Tomcat 7 on Ubuntu 14.04 and deplyoying a web application

Install Tomcat with apt-get

This will install the tomcat software and administration tools

sudo apt-get install tomcat7
sudo apt-get install tomcat7-admin

sudo chgrp -R tomcat7 /etc/tomcat7
sudo chmod -R g+w /etc/tomcat7 

#Directory Strcuture

• CATALINA_HOME

The tomcat installation directory is referred as CATALINA_HOME and is set to /usr/share/tomcat7 by default

• CATALINA_BASE

This tomcat runtime directory and is set to /var/lib/tomcat7 by default web applications can be found here.

webapps can be found in webapps directory

• CONFIGURATION

Configuration files can found at /etc/tomcat7

• DEFAULT CONFIGURATION

default configuration files for tomcat can be found at /etc/default/tomcat7

COMMANDS

Tomcat service can be checked

sudo service tomcat7 status

Commands for starting and stopping are as follows

sudo service tomcat7 start
sudo service tomcat7 stop

CONFIGURATION

• PORT CONFIGURATION

By default Tomcat runs a HTTP connector on port 8080 This ports can be configured by changing the following lines in /etc/tomcat7/server.xml

<Connector port="8090" protocol="HTTP/1.1" 
               connectionTimeout="20000" 
               redirectPort="8443" />

• JVM CONFIGURATION

By default Tomcat will run preferably with OpenJDK JVMs, then try the Sun JVMs, then try some other JVMs. You can force Tomcat to use a specific JVM by setting JAVA_HOME in /etc/default/tomcat7:

JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

• Declaring users and roles

Usernames, passwords and roles (groups) can be defined centrally in a Servlet container. This is done in the /etc/tomcat7/tomcat-users.xml file:

<role rolename="admin"/>
<user username="tomcat" password="reloded23" roles="admin,manager-gui,host-gui"/>

• Larger uploads

Modify /usr/share/tomcat7-admin/manager/WEB-INF/web.xml to handle larger uploads.

    <multipart-config>
      <max-file-size>72428800</max-file-size>
      <max-request-size>72428800</max-request-size>
      <file-size-threshold>0</file-size-threshold>
    </multipart-config>
    

Deploying the Web Application

Tomcat manager GUI can be accessed as follows

http://10.0.0.15:8090/manager/html

you can manager all the webapps from this terminal

References

• http://askubuntu.com/questions/135824/what-is-the-tomcat-installation-directory
• https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/serverguide/tomcat.html
• http://mythinkpond.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/tomcat-6-infamous-severe-error-listenerstart-message-how-to-debug-this-error/