Installing Apache Tomcat 6 on CentOS

CentOS is great substitute for Red Hat Enterprise Linux but is missing some useful packages like Apache Tomcat 6. Installing Apache Tomcat 6 on CentOS 5 from gzip-package is fairly easy. The following guide is at least for CentOS 5.4.

Pre-Requirements
First you need to install Sun JDK and you can follow the instructions given in Installing Sun JDK 1.6 on CentOS

After Java is on place it’s time to get ready for Tomcat.

Download Apache Ant and Tomcat

1. Download apache-ant and apache-tomcat -packages.
2. Extract those packages to /opt/

   • #[root@srv ~]# cd /opt
     # tar -xzf apache-tomcat-6.0.26.tar.gz
     # tar -xzf apache-ant-1.7.1-bin.tar.gz
     

3. Create a symbolic link for Ant

   • # ln -s /opt/apache-ant-1.7.1/bin/ant /usr/bin/
     

Create start script

1. Create a tomcat user so that we don’t need root privileges for Tomcat

   • # useradd -d /opt/apache-tomcat-6.0.26/ tomcat
     

2. Create start script to /etc/init.d for starting and stopping Tomcat

   • #  vim /etc/init.d/tomcat
     

3. The script is (via Build a safe cage for Tomcat)

   • #!/bin/bash
     #
     # tomcat       Starts Tomcat Java server.
     #
     #
     # chkconfig: 345 88 12
     # description: Tomcat is the server for 
     # Java servlet applications.
     ### BEGIN INIT INFO
     # Provides: $tomcat
     ### END INIT INFO
     
     JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_18
     export JAVA_HOME
     TOMCAT_HOME=/opt/apache-tomcat-6.0.26/bin
     START_TOMCAT=/opt/apache-tomcat-6.0.26/bin/startup.sh
     STOP_TOMCAT=/opt/apache-tomcat-6.0.26/bin/shutdown.sh
     
     # Source function library.
     . /etc/init.d/functions
     
     [ -f $START_TOMCAT ] || exit 0
     [ -f $STOP_TOMCAT ] || exit 0
     
     RETVAL=0
     
     umask 077
     
     start() {
             echo -n $"Starting Tomcat Java server: "
             daemon su -c $START_TOMCAT tomcat
             echo
             return $RETVAL
     }
     stop() {
             echo -n $"Shutting down Tomcat Java server: "
             daemon su -c $STOP_TOMCAT tomcat
             echo
             return $RETVAL
     }
     restart() {
             stop
             start
     }
     case "$1" in
       start)
             start
             ;;
       stop)
             stop
             ;;
       restart|reload)
             restart
             ;;
       *)
             echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
             exit 1
     esac
     
     exit $?
     

4. Give executable rights for that script

   • # chmod 755 /etc/init.d/tomcat
     

5. Add the script to CentOS services

   • # chkconfig --add tomcat
     

6. Check the changes

   • # chkconfig --level 234 tomcat on
     # chkconfig --list tomcat
     
     tomcat 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:off 6:off
     

7. You should see that the service uses levels 2, 3 and 4
8. Test that the script is working and it gives no errors

   • # service tomcat start
     # service tomcat stop
     

9. Everythings ready