MMBase Installation HOWTO
Prev |  | Next

# 4. Installing Tomcat

Download a binary distribution of Tomcat from the Apache Jakarta website:

      http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/

If you don't want to run the Tomcat daemon as root, create a new user/group tomcat (first make sure that the UID and GID you use are still available by checking the files `/etc/passwd` and `/etc/group`):

      groupadd -g 220 tomcat
      useradd -u 220 -g tomcat -c "Tomcat" -r -d /usr/local/tomcat -s "/sbin/nologin" tomcat

| You really should not use the root account to run the Tomcat daemon; (using Tomcat version 4.1.27) we found out that this allows the MMBase admin user to write backup dumps of his sites anywhere on the system.

<TODO: better solution available?>

Extract the Tomcat distribution in a new directory:

      cd /usr/local/
      tar -zxvf .../jakarta-tomcat-xxx.tar.gz

Version 4.1.27 came with a hot-fix:

      cd /usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-xxx/
      tar -zxvf .../xxx-hotfix-xxx.tar.gz

Change the ownership of the Tomcat directory and make it available as `/usr/local/tomcat/`:

      chown -R tomcat:tomcat /usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-xxx
      ln -s /usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-xxx /usr/local/tomcat

Open up the firewall for web access to the Tomcat server by adding to the file `/etc/sysconfig/iptables`:

      -A RH-Lokkit-0-50-INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 8080 --syn -j ACCEPT

You need to reboot your system to make this rule effective or restart the iptables firewall:

      service iptables restart

Since (for some odd reason) some network managers allow outgoing web connections only to TCP port 80, there might be people around that cannot access your Tomcat (and MMBase) server through port 8080. Further below we will explain how to install a JK 2 mapping or a reverse proxy in Apache, so Tomcat and MMBase can be accessed through the Apache web server at port 80. Apart from the port issue, this has the advantage that you can use Apache to manage you SSL connections and use your existing Apache logs and statistics facilities for Tomcat and MMBase as well.

If you decide to use Apache as a front-end to your Tomcat and MMBase server, there's no need to open up port 8080 in your firewall.

To run Tomcat, set the `$CATALINA_HOME` environment variable:

      CATALINA_HOME=/usr/local/tomcat

and fire it up:

      /usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh

Now you can access Tomcat's home page through (replace `<hostname>` with your hostname):

      http://<hostname>:8080/

which should give you the Tomcat welcome screen.

To shutdown again:

      /usr/local/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh

Since we want to automate the starting up and shutting down of the Tomcat server, we create a file `/etc/rc.d/init.d/tomcat` to do this for us:

      #!/bin/sh
      #
      # Startup script for the Jakarta Tomcat Java Servlets and JSP server
      #
      # chkconfig: - 85 15
      # description: Jakarta Tomcat Java Servlets and JSP server
      # processname: tomcat
      # pidfile: /var/run/tomcat.pid
      # config:

      # Source function library.
      . /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

      # Source networking configuration.
      . /etc/sysconfig/network

      # Check that networking is up.
      [ ${NETWORKING} = "no" ] && exit 0

      # Set Tomcat environment.
      export JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/j2sdk
      export CLASSPATH=.:/usr/local/j2sdk/lib/tools.jar:/usr/local/j2re/lib/rt.jar
      export CATALINA_HOME=/usr/local/tomcat
      export CATALINA_OPTS="-server -Xms64m -Xmx512m -Dbuild.compiler.emacs=true"
      export PATH=/usr/local/j2sdk/bin:/usr/local/j2re/bin:$PATH

      [ -f /usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh ] || exit 0
      [ -f /usr/local/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh ] || exit 0

      export PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin

      # See how we were called.
      case "$1" in
        start)
              # Start daemon.
              echo -n "Starting Tomcat: "
              /usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
              RETVAL=$?
              echo
              [ $RETVAL = 0 ] && touch /var/lock/subsys/tomcat
              ;;
        stop)
              # Stop daemons.
              echo -n "Shutting down Tomcat: "
              /usr/local/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
              RETVAL=$?
              echo
              [ $RETVAL = 0 ] && rm -f /var/lock/subsys/tomcat
              ;;
        restart)
              $0 stop
              $0 start
              ;;
        condrestart)
             [ -e /var/lock/subsys/tomcat ] && $0 restart
             ;;
        status)
              status tomcat
              ;;
        *)
              echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|status}"
              exit 1
      esac

      exit 0

Set its ownership and access rights:

      chown root:root /etc/rc.d/init.d/tomcat
      chmod 755 /etc/rc.d/init.d/tomcat

And add this init script to chkconfig:

      chkconfig --add tomcat
      chkconfig tomcat on

| Instead of creating your own init script, you can use the script that comes with the Tomcat package: `/usr/local/tomcat/bin/catalina.sh`. Make sure you set the Tomcat environment at the start of this script. Or create a short init script that calls the original Tomcat init script. See How can I start Tomcat as a daemon in Linux?.

To install two (or even more) versions of Tomcat server on the same system, increase the port numbers of the second server (e.g. by 10), by editing the configuration file `/usr/local/tomcat55/conf/server.xml`:

      <Server port="8015" shutdown="SHUTDOWN">
      ...
      <!-- Define a non-SSL HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8080 -->
      <Connector port="8090"
          maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
          enableLookups="false" redirectPort="8453" acceptCount="100"
          connectionTimeout="20000" disableUploadTimeout="true" />
      ...
      <!-- Define a SSL HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8443 -->
      <!--
      <Connector port="8453"
          maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
          enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true"
          acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true"
          clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" />
      -->
      ...
      <!-- Define an AJP 1.3 Connector on port 8009 -->
      <Connector port="8019"
          enableLookups="false" redirectPort="8453" protocol="AJP/1.3" />
      ...
      <!-- Define a Proxied HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8082 -->
      <!-- See proxy documentation for more information about using this. -->
      <!--
      <Connector port="8082"
          maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
          enableLookups="false" acceptCount="100" connectionTimeout="20000"
          proxyPort="80" disableUploadTimeout="true" />
      -->

Complete this second Tomcat server installation as above for the first server, using adjusted directory and file names.

Prev | Home | Next
Installing Java |  | Replacing Tomcat's default JSP compiler Jasper with IBM's Jikes compiler