Tomcat Installation on Ubuntu

Reference

• How to Install Apache Tomcat 10 on Ubuntu

Install Tomcat

# Create Tomcat user and provide access to /opt/tomcat
sudo useradd -m -d /opt/tomcat -U -s /bin/false tomcat

# Update package index
sudo apt update

# Install Java 17
sudo apt install openjdk-17-jdk -y

# Verify Java installation
java --version

# Move to temporary directory
cd /tmp

# Download Tomcat package
wget https://dlcdn.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-10/v10.1.55/bin/apache-tomcat-10.1.55.tar.gz

# Extract Tomcat into /opt/tomcat
sudo tar xzvf apache-tomcat-10.1.55.tar.gz \
  -C /opt/tomcat \
  --strip-components=1

# Set ownership and permissions
sudo chown -R tomcat:tomcat /opt/tomcat
sudo chmod -R u+x /opt/tomcat/bin

Configure Tomcat Users

Edit the Tomcat users configuration file:

sudo nano /opt/tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml

Add the following content inside the <tomcat-users> section:

<role rolename="manager-gui" />
<user username="manager" password="manager_password" roles="manager-gui" />

<role rolename="admin-gui" />
<user username="admin" password="admin_password" roles="manager-gui,admin-gui" />

Allow Remote Access to Tomcat Manager

Edit the Manager application context file:

sudo nano /opt/tomcat/webapps/manager/META-INF/context.xml

Replace/comment the RemoteAddrValve section as shown below:

<Context antiResourceLocking="false" privileged="true">
    <CookieProcessor
        className="org.apache.tomcat.util.http.Rfc6265CookieProcessor"
        sameSiteCookies="strict" />

    <!--
    <Valve
        className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve"
        allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" />
    -->
</Context>

Repeat the same change for:

/opt/tomcat/webapps/host-manager/META-INF/context.xml

Create Systemd Service

List installed Java versions:

sudo update-java-alternatives -l

Create a Tomcat systemd service file:

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

Add the following content:

[Unit]
Description=Apache Tomcat Web Application Container
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking

User=tomcat
Group=tomcat

Environment="JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.17.0-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

Restart=always
RestartSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Start and Enable Tomcat

# Reload systemd configuration
sudo systemctl daemon-reload

# Start Tomcat
sudo systemctl start tomcat

# Enable Tomcat at boot
sudo systemctl enable tomcat

# Check service status
sudo systemctl status tomcat

Verify Installation

Open the following URL in your browser:

http://<SERVER_IP>:8080

Tomcat Manager:

http://<SERVER_IP>:8080/manager/html

Tomcat Host Manager:

http://<SERVER_IP>:8080/host-manager/html