1. Install for Single User

• Check if JAVA_HOME is already set

echo $JAVA_HOME

If response is empty, then JAVA_HOME is not set.

• Set Variable

vi ~/.bashrc OR vi ~/.bash_profile

Add

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jre1.6.0_04

Save file

• Reload profile

source ~/.bashrc OR source ~/.bash_profile

2 Create tomcat user

For security purposes, Tomcat should not be run under the root user. We will create a new system user and group with home directory /opt/tomcat that will run the Tomcat service:

sudo useradd -r -m -U -d /opt/tomcat -s /bin/false tomcat

3 Install Tomcat

Start by download the Tomcat archive in the /tmp directory using the following wget command:

wget http://www-eu.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.14/bin/apache-tomcat-9.0.14.tar.gz -P /tmp

Once the download is completed, extract the Tomcat archive and move it to the /opt/tomcat directory:

sudo tar xf /tmp/apache-tomcat-9*.tar.gz -C /opt/tomcat

To have more control over Tomcat versions and updates, we will create a symbolic link latest which will point to the Tomcat installation directory:

sudo ln -s /opt/tomcat/apache-tomcat-9.0.14 /opt/tomcat/latest

The following command will change the directory ownership to user and group tomcat:

sudo chown -RH tomcat: /opt/tomcat/latest

The scripts inside bin directory must have executable flag:

sudo sh -c ‘chmod +x /opt/tomcat/latest/bin/*.sh’

4 Create a systemd unit file

To run Tomcat as a service we will create a new unit file. Open your text editor and create a file named tomcat.service in the /etc/systemd/system/:

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

Paste the following configuration:

[Unit]
Description=Tomcat 9 servlet container
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking

User=tomcat
Group=tomcat

Environment="JAVA_OPTS=-Djava.security.egd=file:///dev/urandom -Djava.awt.headless=true"

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

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

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save and close the file and notify systemd that we created a new unit file:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Start the Tomcat service by executing:

sudo systemctl start tomcat

Check the service status with the following command:

sudo systemctl status tomcat

* tomcat.service - Tomcat 9 servlet container
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2018-09-05 15:45:28 PDT; 20s ago
  Process: 1582 ExecStart=/opt/tomcat/latest/bin/startup.sh (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 1604 (java)
    Tasks: 47 (limit: 2319)
   CGroup: /system.slice/tomcat.service

If there are no errors enable the Tomcat service to be automatically started at boot time:

sudo systemctl enable tomcat

5 Adjust the Firewall

If your server is protected by a firewall and you want to access Tomcat interface from the outside of your local network you need to open port 8080.

To allow traffic on port 8080 type the following command:

sudo ufw allow 8080/tcp