Installing Tomcat Software

Download the latest Tomcat 6.x version from http://tomcat.apache.org/download-60.cgi. For Debian I downloaded the Binary Core Distribution file apache-tomcat-6.0.18.tar.gz which was the latest version at the time of this writing.

Once you downloaded the tar file make sure the MD5 checksum matches the value posted on Tomcat's web site, see http://www.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-6/v6.0.18/bin/apache-tomcat-6.0.18.tar.gz.md5:

# md5sum /tmp/apache-tomcat-6.0.18.tar.gz
8354e156f097158f8d7b699078fd39c1  /tmp/apache-tomcat-6.0.18.tar.gz

Installing Tomcat from a binary release (tar file) requires manual creation of the Tomcat user account. This is not necessary if you install the Tomcat RPM package on a Linux system that supports RPMs.

For security reasons I created a user account with no login shell for running the Tomcat server:

# groupadd tomcat
# useradd -g tomcat -s /usr/sbin/nologin -m -d /home/tomcat tomcat

(It should be noted that other Linux systems have nologin under /sbin not /usr/sbin)

Next I extracted the tar file to /var/lib and changed the ownership of all files and directories to tomcat:

# cd /var/lib
# tar zxvf /tmp/apache-tomcat-6.0.18.tar.gz
# chown -R tomcat.tomcat /var/lib/apache-tomcat-6.0.18

The get the Tomcat version of the newly installed Tomcat, run:

# /var/lib/apache-tomcat-6.0.18/bin/version.sh
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /var/lib/apache-tomcat-6.0.18
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /var/lib/apache-tomcat-6.0.18
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /var/lib/apache-tomcat-6.0.18/temp
Using JRE_HOME:       /usr
Server version: Apache Tomcat/6.0.18
Server built:   Jul 22 2008 02:00:36
Server number:  6.0.18.0
OS Name:        Linux
OS Version:     2.6.18-6-amd64
Architecture:   x86_64
JVM Version:    1.4.2
JVM Vendor:     Free Software Foundation, Inc.
#

Starting/Stopping Tomcat

Now try to startup the Tomcat server to see whether the default Tomcat home page is being displayed.

For security reasons I don't run the Tomcat server as user root but as tomcat which was created with no login shell. Therefore, to run Tomcat use the su command with the -p option to preserves all the environment variables when switching to tomcat (more on the Tomcat environment variables later). And since the tomcat account has no login shell, it needs to be specified with the -s option. (You may want to use this su command if you plan on writing and implementing a system startup and shutdown script for system reboots.)

# export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_10
# export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH
# export CATALINA_HOME=/var/lib/apache-tomcat-6.0.18
# export CATALINA_BASE=/var/lib/apache-tomcat-6.0.18
#

# su -p -s /bin/sh tomcat $CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /var/lib/apache-tomcat-6.0.18
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /var/lib/apache-tomcat-6.0.18
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /var/lib/apache-tomcat-6.0.18/temp
Using JRE_HOME:       /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_10
#

Now verify that Tomcat was started successfully by opening the URL http://localhost:8080 (Port number 8080 is the default port used by Tomcat). Note that you should also be able to use the name of your server instead of localhost. Once you opened the URL in your browser you should see Tomcat's Congratulation page. If you don't see the page, check the log files under $CATALINA_HOME/logs (/var/lib/apache-tomcat-6.0.18/logs).

Before you continue with the next steps, make sure to shut down Tomcat since we want to run the Tomcat server out of a separate application directory which is covered in the next chapter.

# su -p -s /bin/sh tomcat $CATALINA_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /var/lib/apache-tomcat-6.0.18
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /var/lib/apache-tomcat-6.0.18
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /var/lib/apache-tomcat-6.0.18/temp
Using JRE_HOME:       /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_10
#

Switching to Tomcat User Account

Most of the next steps in this article assume that you switched to the tomcat user account. If you see a '$' prompt, then the steps in this article are executed as the tomcat user. If you see a '#' prompt, then the steps are executed as root.

Since for security reasons the tomcat user has no login shell, it needs to be specified with the -s option when switching from root to tomcat:

# su - -s /bin/sh tomcat
$ id
uid=1001(tomcat) gid=1001(tomcat) groups=1001(tomcat)
$

Note that non-root users cannot switch to the tomcat account