Install Tomcat 6 on Ubuntu
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Table of Contents

Make sure you have Java#

$ dpkg –get-selections | grep sun-java

You should get 

sun-java6-bin                                   install
sun-java6-jdk                                   install
sun-java6-jre                                   install

If not, install Java 

$ sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

Installation#

Download and extract Tomcat from the apache site. You should check to make sure there's not another version and adjust accordingly. 

$ wget http://apache.mirrors.tds.net/tomcat/tomcat-6/v6.0.20/bin/apache-tomcat-6.0.20.tar.gz
$ tar xvzf apache-tomcat-6.0.20.tar.gz

The best thing to do is move the tomcat folder to a permanent location. I chose /usr/local/tomcat, but you could move it somewhere else if you wanted to. 

$ sudo mv apache-tomcat-6.0.20 /usr/local/tomcat

Tomcat requires setting the JAVA_HOME variable. The best way to do this is to set it in your .bashrc file. You could also edit your startup.sh file if you so chose.

The better method is editing your .bashrc file and adding the bolded line there. You'll have to logout of the shell for the change to take effect. 

$ vi ~/.bashrc

Add the following line: 

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

At this point you can start tomcat by just executing the startup.sh script in the tomcat/bin folder.

Automatic Starting#

To make tomcat automatically start when we boot up the computer, you can add a script to make it auto-start and shutdown. 

$ sudo vi /etc/init.d/tomcat

Now paste in the following: 

# Tomcat auto-start
#
# description: Auto-starts tomcat
# processname: tomcat
# pidfile: /var/run/tomcat.pid

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

case $1 in
start)
        sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
        ;;
stop)  
        sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
        ;;
restart)
        sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
        sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
        ;;
esac   
exit 0

You'll need to make the script executable by running the chmod command: 

$ sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/tomcat

The last step is actually linking this script to the startup folders with a symbolic link. Execute these two commands and we should be on our way. 

$ sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/tomcat /etc/rc1.d/K99tomcat
$ sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/tomcat /etc/rc2.d/S99tomcat

Tomcat should now be fully installed and operational.

Usage#

Then you can start, stop, and restart tomcat with 

$ sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat start
$ sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat stop
$ sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat restart

Sources

Linux - Tomcat - Networking