Easy Guide to Install Apache Tomcat 9 on Ubuntu 18.04 / 16.04 LTS Server
Abstract: ~$ sudo chgrp -R tomcat /opt/tomcat~$ sudo mkdir /opt/tomcat Create a tomcat user using below useradd command
Apache Tomcat 9 is a free and open source web server which is used to serve java based web applications. In other words we can say Tomcat server is used to implement Java Servlet and JSP (Java Server Pages) technologies.
In this article we will demonstrate how to install latest version of tomcat i.e Tomcat 9.0.10 on Ubuntu 18.04 / 16.04 LTS Server. One of the important perquisite of Tomcat 9 is Java 8 or higher version, lets jump into the installations steps.
Step:1) Install Java 8 or its higher versionUsing the default configured apt repositories on ubuntu 18.04 & 16.04 server, we can install the java using the package name 「default-jdk「. Run the beneath apt commands,
[email protected]:~$ sudo apt update [email protected]:~$ sudo apt install default-jdk -y
Once above packages are installed then verified the Java version using below command,
[email protected]:~$ java --version
openjdk 10.0.1 2018-04-17
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 10.0.1+10-Ubuntu-3ubuntu1)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 10.0.1+10-Ubuntu-3ubuntu1, mixed mode)
[email protected]:~$ Step:2 Create tomcat User
Tomcat service will be controlled by tomcat user, so let create a user with name 「tomcat「, whose home directory will be 「/opt/tomcat」 and shell will be 「/bin/false」.
If the folder or home directory of tomcat (/opt/tomcat) doesn’t exist then create it using mkdir command,
[email protected]:~$ sudo mkdir /opt/tomcat
Create a tomcat user using below useradd command,
[email protected]:~$ sudo useradd -s /bin/false -d /opt/tomcat tomcatStep:3 Download & Install Tomcat 9 from command line
Download the latest version of tomcat 9 (i.e 9.0.10) from its official Web site https://tomcat.apache.org/download-90.cgi. In my case I am directly downloading it on my server using below wget command,
[email protected]:~$ wget http://www-us.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.10/bin/apache-tomcat-9.0.10.tar.gz
Once the above file is downloaded, extract it into the tomcat user’s home folder (/opt/tomcat) using below tar command,
[email protected]:~$ sudo tar xzvf apache-tomcat-9.0.10.tar.gz -C /opt/tomcat --strip-components=1
Set the required permissions on /opt/tomcat and its sub folder and files.
[email protected]:~$ sudo chgrp -R tomcat /opt/tomcat [email protected]:~$ cd /opt/tomcat/ [email protected]:/opt/tomcat$ sudo chmod -R g+r conf [email protected]:/opt/tomcat$ sudo chmod g+x conf
Make the tomcat as file owner of the following directories webapps, work, temp, and logs using the beneath chown command
[email protected]:/opt/tomcat$ sudo chown -R tomcat webapps/ work/ temp/ logs/
So now all the required permissions are set, let create tomcat systemd service so that tomcat service can be controlled by systemctl command.
Step:4) Create Tomcat Systemd ServiceTo configure tomcat as a service on ubuntu server we need to create systemd file. In the systemd file we must specify the java path, so first find java path using below command,
[email protected]:~$ sudo update-java-alternatives -l
java-1.11.0-openjdk-amd64 1101 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.11.0-openjdk-amd64
[email protected]:~$
Now create a systemd file with name 「/etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service」 and insert the following contents
[email protected]:~$ sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service
[Unit]
Description=Apache Tomcat Web Application Container
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=forking
Environment=JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.11.0-openjdk-amd64
Environment=CATALINA_PID=/opt/tomcat/temp/tomcat.pid
Environment=CATALINA_HOME=/opt/tomcat
Environment=CATALINA_BASE=/opt/tomcat
Environment='CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms512M -Xmx1024M -server -XX:+UseParallelGC'
Environment='JAVA_OPTS=-Djava.awt.headless=true -Djava.security.egd=file:/dev/./urandom'
ExecStart=/opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
ExecStop=/opt/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
User=tomcat
Group=tomcat
UMask=0007
RestartSec=10
Restart=always
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Reload the systemd daemon and start tomcat service,
[email protected]:~$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload [email protected]:~$ sudo systemctl start tomcat [email protected]:~$ sudo systemctl enable tomcat Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/tomcat.service → /etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service. [email protected]:~$ [email protected]:~$ sudo systemctl status tomcat
Output of above command should be something like below,
Step:5) Test Your Tomcat 9 ServerIn case OS firewall is enabled and configured on your server then we need to allow 8080 port. Use the below command
[email protected]:~$ sudo ufw allow 8080 Rule added Rule added (v6) [email protected]:~$
By default, we can access the tomcat web gui from Server itself either via local ip or localhost and if you want to access it from outside then we must comment out one line in both the files 「/opt/tomcat/webapps/host-manager/META-INF/context.xml」 and 「/opt/tomcat/webapps/manager/META-INF/context.xml」
[email protected]:~$ sudo vi /opt/tomcat/webapps/host-manager/META-INF/context.xml ---------------------------------------------------------- <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve" allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" /> ---------------------------------------------------------- Change to or comment out ---------------------------------------------------------- <!--Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve" allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" /> --> ----------------------------------------------------------- [email protected]:~$ sudo vi /opt/tomcat/webapps/manager/META-INF/context.xml ----------------------------------------------------------- <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve" allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" /> ----------------------------------------------------------- Change to or Comment out ----------------------------------------------------------- <!--Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve" allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" />--> -----------------------------------------------------------
Restart the tomcat service using the below command,
[email protected]:~$ sudo systemctl restart tomcat
Now Open your web browser and type url : http://<Tomcat-Server-IP-Addres>:8080
As of now we have successfully installed Tomcat 9, but to Access Application Web manager and Virtual Host Manager we must define some user and its password in 「tomcat-users.xml」 file. So add the following line before </tomcat-users>
[email protected]:~$ sudo vi /opt/tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml ---------------------------------------------------------- <role rolename="manager-gui"/> <user username="linuxtechi" password="XXXXXXX" roles="manager-gui,admin-gui"/> ----------------------------------------------------------
Save and exit the file then restart the tomcat service
[email protected]:~$ sudo systemctl restart tomcat [email protected]:~$
Now Try to access Web Application Manager and Virtual Host Manager, use the same user name and password that you have specified in the tomcat-users.xml file,
Similarly access Virtual Host Manager,
This confirms that you have successfully installed Tomcat 9 on your Ubuntu 18.04 / 16.04 LTS Server. That’s all from this tutorial, please do share your feedback and comments.
