How to install Apache Tomcat on ubuntu - a simple & practical guide

Last Updated on March 30, 2023 by cscontents

Table of Contents

Introduction

Tomcat is one of the most popular & widely used open-source web servers. It also works as a servlet container to serve Java applications. Tomcat web server is licensed under the Apache License. Tomcat web server is written in Java language.

Prerequisite

To complete this tutorial, you need the below prerequisites.

One ubuntu machine with a user who has sudo privileges
Knowledge of basic Linux commands.

Steps to install Tomcat

Below are the steps to install Tomcat.

Step 1: Install JDK

Since Tomcat is written in Java, it requires Java runtime to be present on the machine. In this step, we will install JDK.

Follow the below document to install Java on the ubuntu machine.

https://cscontents.com/java-installation-on-ubuntu-rhel-centos/#Java_installation_on_Ubuntu

After installation, please check the JAVA_HOME path & note it down it will be required in step-4 where we will create a systemd service file for Tomcat.

echo $JAVA_HOME

If the JAVA_HOME path is not set, please set it by following the above article.

Step 2: Create a user for tomcat

It is recommended to run any software under a dedicated user in Linux. Here also we will create a user for Tomcat. We will call it ‘tomcat’.

sudo useradd tomcat

To verify the created user & group run the below commands.

To verify the tomcat user –

cat /etc/passwd | grep tomcat

To verify the tomcat group –

cat /etc/group | grep tomcat

Step 3: Download Tomcat Binaries

We will be installing Tomcat 10. For this download the tomcat binaries. If you want to install a different version of Tomcat, then please download the required version.

We will keep the tomcat binaries under /opt directory.

Now, download the binaries.

sudo wget https://dlcdn.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-10/v10.1.7/bin/apache-tomcat-10.1.7.tar.gz

Step 4: Extract the binaries

Run the below command to unzip the downloaded tomcat binaries.

sudo tar xzvf apache-tomcat-10.*.tar.gz

Once we extract the binaries we will a directory with the name apache-tomcat-10.*.*

For simplicity, we will rename the apache-tomcat-10.*.* directory to ‘tomcat’

sudo mv apache-tomcat-10.1.7 tomcat

Step 5: Change the ownership of the tomcat directory

Run the below command to change the owner & group of the tomcat directory.

sudo chown -R tomcat:tomcat /opt/tomcat/

Step 6: Create a Tomcat service file

To run the Tomcat web server quietly in the background we need to create a systemd service for Tomcat.

Run the below command.

sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service

Paste the below content (edit the values as per your environment, for example, you should enter the correct JAVA_HOME path)

[Unit]
Description=Tomcat 10
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking

User=tomcat
Group=tomcat

Environment="JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64"
Environment="JAVA_OPTS=-Djava.security.egd=file:///dev/urandom"

Environment="CATALINA_BASE=/opt/tomcat"
Environment="CATALINA_HOME=/opt/tomcat"
Environment="CATALINA_PID=/opt/tomcat/temp/tomcat.pid"
Environment="CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms512M -Xmx1024M -server -XX:+UseParallelGC"

ExecStart=/opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
ExecStop=/opt/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Finally, save the file.

Step 7: Start the tomcat web server

In the previous step, we created a service file for tomcat.

Since we added a new service file, so we need to reload the systemd daemon.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Now, start the tomcat service.

sudo systemctl start tomcat

Check the status of the tomcat service.

sudo systemctl status tomcat

Finally, we will enable the tomcat service.

sudo systemctl enable tomcat

Step 8: Access the web interface (optional)

Once the tomcat server is up & running, we can access its web interface from the browser. You need to enter the below URL.

http://your_machine_ip:8080

Note: you need to allow port 8080 in your machine’s network. Basically, you need to add an inbound rule.

Thank You.

If you are interested in learning DevOps, please have a look at the below articles, which will help you greatly.