Tomcat setup¶

Info

This document provides some recipes and examples for installing Tomcat on your system. Refer to the official Tomcat homepage for updated documentation and installation instructions.

Note that Tomcat requires Java prior to installation.

Installation¶

Ubuntu/Debian¶

On Ubuntu/Debian Tomcat can be installed easily from the command line. Both tomcat7 and tomcat8 versions are available, feel free to replace 8 by 7 in the following examples:

$ sudo apt-get install tomcat8 tomcat8-admin

The tomcat server listens by default on port 8080 and its webapps folder is located in /var/lib/tomcat8/webapps.

Apple OSX¶

Tomcat 8 can be installed with homebrew, open a terminal and type:

$ brew install tomcat

The tomcat server listens by default on port 8080 and its webapps folder is located in /usr/local/Cellar/tomcat/[version]/libexec/webapps/.

If you want to check the service, run

$ brew services list

Windows¶

Download the tomcat windows binaries on the Tomcat download page and follow instructions.

Docker (multiplatform)¶

Alternatively you can pull the official tomcat image.

$ docker run -it --rm tomcat:8.0

And listens by default on 8088 port.

Configuration¶

Ubuntu/Debian¶

Admin interface (optional)¶

An optional but nice move to do is to configure the Tomcat admin interface:

$ sudo vi /etc/tomcat8/tomcat-users.xml

Replace username and password in the section

<tomcat-users>
    <user username="admin" password="password" roles="manager-gui,admin-gui"/>
</tomcat-users>

Restart tomcat to apply changes with sudo service tomcat8 restart or sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat8 restart.

Setting Oracle JDK (optional)¶

On Ubuntu systems:

$ sudo vi /etc/default/tomcat8

And modify JAVA_HOME, for example with latest Oracle JDK

JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle

Restart tomcat to apply changes with sudo service tomcat8 restart or sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat8 restart.

Adding more memory¶

On Ubuntu systems:

$ vi /etc/default/tomcat8

Look for the Xmx default at 128m and increase

JAVA_OPTS="-Djava.awt.headless=true -Xmx512m -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC"

then restart Tomcat

sudo service tomcat8 restart

Testing installation¶

Open your browser to "http://localhost:8080", a page should say 'It works'

The tomcat manager interface can be located at "http://localhost:8080/manager"

Resources¶

http://tomcat.apache.org/ https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-apache-tomcat-7-on-ubuntu-14-04-via-apt-get