How to install Tomcat 6 on Ubuntu

Apache Tomcat is a free and open source software implementation for JavaServlets, providing support for Java Server Pages (JSP). Many popular web-based applications use servlets. You may choose to run Tomcat with either Sun's Java implementation or the OpenJDK implementation of Java.

Because Tomcat version 6 was included in Ubuntu installing a working Tomcat server is reasonably straightforward. However, before we can start installing Tomcat itself, we must first install Java.

First Install Sun Java in ubuntu 9.04 using this tutorial

Install tomcat 6 in ubuntu 9.04

sudo apt-get install tomcat6 tomcat6-admin tomcat6-common tomcat6-user tomcat6-docs tomcat6-examples

This command downloads and install the following packages

tomcat6 : Servlet and JSP engine

tomcat6-admin : Admin web applications

tomcat6-common : Common files

tomcat6-user : Tools to create user instances

tomcat6-docs : Example web applications

tomcat6-examples : Example web applications

To start, stop,  restart and get the server status

Start tomcat server

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat6 start

Stop tomcat server

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat6 stop

Restart tomcat server

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat6 restart

Get tomcat server status

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat6 status

After installation type http://localhost:8080  or http://serverip:8080/examples/servlets/ in your browser.Now you should see tomcat welcome page

* To enable admin web based features add the following lines to your /etc/tomcat6/tomcat-user.xml

<role rolename="manager"/>
<role rolename="admin"/>
<user name="admin" password="secret_password" roles="manager,admin"/>

* you should be able to see your manage page here http://your_ip_goes_here:8080/manager/html

* log in with the name and password you just set in /etc/tomcat6/tomcat-users.xml

* ls /var/lib/tomcat6 directory.

* you should see these directories conf, logs, webapps, work

* webapps is where your servlets will go ( or at least a xml file that points to them )

* as a test download this war file http://simple.souther.us/SimpleServlet.war

* then use the tomcat management page and select war file to deploy ( in teh deploy section) to upload this file to your server

* optionally just wget http://simple.souther.us/SimpleServlet.war directly to the webapps folder

* tomcat should recognize the war file and expand it with everything you need

* browse to http://serverip:8080/SimpleServlet/

Change tomcat server to run on port 80

If you want to Change tomcat server to run on port 80 follow this procedure

You need to edit the /etc/tomcat6/server.xml file

nano /etc/tomcat6/server.xml

Now replace the part that says Connector port=”8080? with Connector port=”80?

Save and exit the file

Restart tomcat server with the following command

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat6 restart