How to install Tomcat and Java 6 on CentOS 5.2
20. Jun, 2009 
13 Comments
I’m not very smart on installing packages on Linux, but today I need to configure a Tomcat on a CentOS 5.2. The CentOS 5.2 has Tomcat 5 available as yum package, with gcc-java. But Java gurus tell me to use the original Sun JDK to run Tomcat without problems. I know that Tomcat can run with a JRE which is a lot smaller, so I started with download the Java JRE 6 Update 11 from here. I choosed Linux/Multilanguage and accepted the Sun Terms. I downloaded the jre-6u11-linux-i586.bin file wich is an autoinstaller for Linux. After uploading the file in the /root dir, I did a chmod to make the file executable: chmod u+x jre-6u11-linux-i586.bin and then ran it
./jre-6u11-linux-i586.bin
I needed to accept the long legal stuff by Sun, inputing a “yes” at the end of the text (press spacebar many time to reach the end). I got the jre folder that I have to move into /usr or something. Not really satisfying me. Why not to try with an rpm, always from the Sun download page? The file is called jre-6u11-linux-i586-rpm.bin. Make it executable, run it (as the previous file), accept the legal stuff and you have an rpm which will be automatically installed. The JRE will e installed in:
/usr/java/jre1.6.0_11/
Now it’s time form Tomcat 5. I used the version 5.5.26, not the latest 5.5.27: we have problem with some JSP containing XML fragments which wouldn’t compile. Tomcat 5 can be download from the archives: pick the file apache-tomcat-5.5.26.tar.gz. Moved it on /root I gunzipped it:
gunzip apache-tomcat-5.5.26.tar.gz
and then untared (I know Linux guru, all those thing can e done with a single compact command line, but it take more time to read the man pages compared to run two separate and clear commenads).
tar xvf apache-tomcat-5.5.26.tar
I got the apache-tomcat-5.5.26 folder which I moved to /usr/tomcat. I like the simple things and not the hyper parametric future minded configurations…
mv apache-tomcat-5.5.26 /usr/tomcat
Now I need some script to run Tomcat as a deamon to put in /etc/init.d. I found a page (which i lost…) and modified the script to match my path. Pay attention: I need Tomcat to run on port 80, so I made it to run as root. If you want to make it run as another user (like tomact) but still responding on port 80, either you need to put in front of it Apache or add some (for me) strange rules to iptables.
The script can be downloaded here: Tomcat Deamon Scripts for CentOS (3472)
The file needed to be copied in /etc/init.d, and then
chown root:root /etc/init.d/tomcat
chmod a+x /etc/init.d/tomcat
To install the script for various runlevels, I ran
/sbin/chkconfig –add tomcat
it will be marked as “on” for runlevel 3, 4, 5 (I’m interest in rulevel 5). To see the configuration of all services, you can run
/sbin/chkconfig –list
On my server Apache was installed and running and I need to stop it to free the port 80. So I marked it as “off” for every runlevel:
/sbin/chkconfig httpd off
and then I stopped it:
/etc/init.d/httpd stop
Now it’s time to configure and then try to run Tomcat. Firstly I changed the configuration
/usr/tomact/server.xml
to make it listen to the port 80. Find the string port=”8080″ and change it to port=”80″. Easy. To run Tomcat has to be configured with the Java path. Remember we are using a JRE so we need to set the environement variable JRE_HOME (not the JAVA_HOME). I did it creating the file “setenv.sh” in /usr/tocat/bin. This file is used by startup and shutdown scripts, without modify them or the catalina.sh script (this is a good practice for future Tomcat upgrade). The file content will be:
export JRE_HOME=/usr/java/latest export CATALINA_PID=/var/run/tomcat.pid The CATALINA_PID variable force Tomcat to create the pid file of the process, useful to kill it. Note that a shutdown of Tomcat can be done in two way. With the call:
/usr/tomcat/bin/shutdown
the same call made from our deamon script, or
/usr/tomcat/bin/shutdown -force
which make the script to wait a little and if the process doesn’t terminate it will be killed (using the pid). You can modify the deamon script to shutdown with “force” (I do it everytime). To start and stop Tomcat:
/etc/init.d/tomcat start
/etc/init.d/tomcat stop
I'm Stefano Lissa. Ten years ago I was building web sites for pleasure. Blogs didn't exist, web content systems were ugly, hosting was really expensive... and my student pocket was empty.
This is very informative article… I really appreciate it.
Thanks
Krishna
Some additional notes.
1. Make sure you install the right java version 32 or 64. When I tried installing a 32 version on a 64 centos, it gave a very cryptic error message. Thanks to google I was able to decipher it.
2. You need to run as root if you want to use port 80. There are workarounds though that requires modifying iptables and whatnots.
Thank you very much for the adds. Yes, I use a iptable roule to have Tomcat on the 80 even if it is configured to listen to the 8080.
Great job Stefano, Will try this tonight – are you saying that you prefer the iptable method rather than mod_proxy (I have Apache 2.2 on port 80 at the moment). I will need to configure ssl in the future for my tomcat requests and thought it might be better to use mod_proxy. Any suggestions.
Thanks,
Malky
I prefer iptable to avoid to manage an apache and tomcat with native librarie can be an efficient web server. Clearly under heavy load dur to static content (like images) an apache can make the difference.
I manage a lot of virtual hosts, so having only tomcat I can configure only it. About SSL, i use the ssl connector of tomcat without problems.
Hello,
About your daemon script, tomcat run behind a java startup command. Then to see status, you have to use something like:
status java | sed “s,java,tomcat,”
I’ve run through this, but the problem is when I try to start tomcat I get nothing:
[root@web1 tomcat]# /etc/init.d/tomcat start
Starting Tomcat service: Using CATALINA_BASE: /usr/tomcat
Using CATALINA_HOME: /usr/tomcat
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /usr/tomcat/temp
Using JRE_HOME: /usr/java/latest
It doesn’t report an error, but it doesn’t start either! Anyone got any ideas?
Ok, I’d like to make a really important note here. Don’t forget to ensure your firewall has port 8080 open if you’re leaving the Tomcat defaults as they are. Yes. I’m an idiot. Yes. That was my problem. Thank you, good night.
DO you realize running tomcat has a listener thread and a worker thread. The listener hands off the same user as from what it accepted the connection. Lets see how long your box runs since you are letting EVERY user have ROOT ACCESS that connects to even an index.html page. Funny guys
Use iptable to route port 80 on 8080 and run tomcat with a low privileges user.
Thanks for the tips, they are really useful.
> I know Linux guru, all those thing can e done with a single compact
> command line, but it take more time to read the man pages compared
> to run two separate and clear commands
The command is the same you use, but with a “z” at the end of the tar arguments to invoke gzip, and a “j” to invoke bz2.
tar xvfz apache-tomcat-5.5.26.tar.gz
tar xvfj apache-tomcat-5.5.26.tar.bz2
The same for compressing:
tar cvfz apache-dir.tar.gz apache-dir
tar cvfj apache-dir.tar.bz2 apache-dir
Guess you don’t need to read the man pages now
Hope this helps.
worked like a charm, thanks!
small thing that I noticed, that the command for adding tomcat into chkconfig is:
/sbin/chkconfig –add tomcat
Just do /sbin/chkconfig, and it will show you all three options