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Tomcat Installation

Overview

Tomcat installation is very simple, and can be describes as "Unpack and Run". These instructions were written using Tomcat 6.0.14 but any recent 6.x version should work. If you are comfortable with the CLI, these the following quick instructions will get you going ASAP; otherwise skip to the Download Tomcat section.

  1. Download Tomcat zip or tar.gz

  2. Unpack archive

  3. Platform specific setup

  4. Run bin/startup.sh or bin/startup.bat

  5. Visit http://localhost:8080/

  6. Run bin/shutdown.sh or bin/shutdown.bat

Download Tomcat

Download Tomcat 6 zip file from here .

Unpack Tomcat

Unpack the Tomcat zip file which will create a new directory containing the complete Tomcat installation.

C:>jar -xvf apache-tomcat-6.0.14.zip
created: apache-tomcat-6.0.14/
created: apache-tomcat-6.0.14/bin/
created: apache-tomcat-6.0.14/conf/
...snip...

C:>dir apache-tomcat-6.0.14  Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 0000-0000

Directory of C:\apache-tomcat-6.0.14

09/20/2007  09:14 PM	.
09/20/2007 09:14 PM ..
09/20/2007 09:15 PM bin
09/20/2007 09:15 PM conf
09/20/2007 09:15 PM lib
07/20/2007 04:20 AM 11,560 LICENSE
09/20/2007 09:14 PM logs
07/20/2007 04:20 AM 556 NOTICE
07/20/2007 04:20 AM 6,656 RELEASE-NOTES
07/20/2007 04:20 AM 5,829 RUNNING.txt
09/20/2007 09:14 PM temp
09/20/2007 09:14 PM webapps
09/20/2007 09:14 PM work
4 File(s) 24,601 bytes 9 Dir(s) 5,085,085,696 bytes free
$ jar -xvf apache-tomcat-6.0.14.zip
  created: apache-tomcat-6.0.14/
  created: apache-tomcat-6.0.14/bin/
  created: apache-tomcat-6.0.14/conf/
...snip...

$ ls apache-tomcat-6.0.14/
LICENSE        RELEASE-NOTES  bin/	     lib/	    temp/	   work/
NOTICE	       RUNNING.txt    conf/	     logs/	    webapps/

OpenEJB - Windows

Set JAVA_HOME environment variable

For Windows users, the Tomcat shell scripts must know the location of the Java installation, and this is done with environment variables. The following command will set the JAVA_HOME environment variable:

C:>set JAVA_HOME =C:\your\java\installation

OpenEJB - Unix

Make shell scripts executable

For Unix users, the shell scripts in the Tomcat installation are not executable by default, so in order to execute them, you must set mark them as executable. If you unpacked the Tomcat tar.gz file, the scripts are already executable. The following command will make all shell scripts executable:

apache-tomcat-6.0.14$ chmod u+x bin/*.sh

Start Tomcat

Execute the following command to start the Tomcat server:

C:>cd apache-tomcat-6.0.14\bin

C:\apache-tomcat-6.0.14\bin>startup.bat
Using CATALINA_BASE:   C:\apache-tomcat-6.0.14
Using CATALINA_HOME:   C:\apache-tomcat-6.0.14
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: C:\apache-tomcat-6.0.14\temp
Using JRE_HOME:        C:\your\java\installation
$ cd apache-tomcat-6.0.14/bin

apache-tomcat-6.0.14/bin$ ./startup.sh
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /your/tomcat/installation/apache-tomcat-6.0.14
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /your/tomcat/installation/apache-tomcat-6.0.14
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /your/tomcat/installation/apache-tomcat-6.0.14/temp
Using JRE_HOME:        /your/java/installation

NOTE: Your output will be different from the example above due to differences in installation location.

Verify Tomcat is Running

Visit http://localhost:8080/ and you should see the Tomcat welcome page.

Stop Tomcat

Shutdown Tomcat by executing the following command:

C:\apache-tomcat-6.0.14\bin>shutdown.bat
Using CATALINA_BASE:   C:\apache-tomcat-6.0.14
Using CATALINA_HOME:   C:\apache-tomcat-6.0.14
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: C:\apache-tomcat-6.0.14\temp
Using JRE_HOME:        C:\your\java\installation
 apache-tomcat-6.0.14/bin$ ./shutdown.sh
 Using CATALINA_BASE:   /your/tomcat/installation/apache-tomcat-6.0.14
 Using CATALINA_HOME:   /your/tomcat/installation/apache-tomcat-6.0.14
 Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /your/tomcat/installation/apache-tomcat-6.0.14/temp
 Using JRE_HOME:        /your/java/installation

NOTE: Your output will be different from the example above due to differences in installation locations.