Install Apache Tomcat under Ubuntu 10.10

The following steps are required to install Apache Tomcat under Ubuntu 10.10:

1. install Sun Java JRE/SDK
   
   For guidelines see for instance http://www.mkyong.com/java/how-to-install-java-jdk-on-ubuntu-linux/.
2. set PATH, CLASSPATH and JAVA_HOME (Ubuntu should set it automatically when installing Java:

   export PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/bin
   export JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun"
   export CLASSPATH="/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun"
   

   Hint: In case you want to make this changes permanent and system-wide you could edit /etc/environment accordingly.

3. download and unpack Apache Tomcat to for instance /opt/tomcat/
4. start Apache Tomcat using:

   sudo /opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
   

   Tomcat should start with the following settings:

   Using CATALINA_BASE:   /opt/tomcat
   Using CATALINA_HOME:   /opt/tomcat
   Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /opt/tomcat/temp
   Using JRE_HOME:        /usr
   Using CLASSPATH:       /opt/tomcat/bin/bootstrap.jar
   

5. sometimes it is useful to change CATALINA_HOME to your local (NetBeans, Eclipse, etc.) workspace:

   export CATALINA_HOME="/home/xyz/workspace"
   

6. activate Tomcat’s manager by creating a manager-user in tomcat-users.xml:

   <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
   <tomcat-users>
     <role rolename="manager"/>
     <user username="admin" password="secret" roles="admin,manager"/>
   </tomcat-users>
   

Hint: When deploying using for instance NetBeans be sure that the current user has enough rights for the corresponding Tomcat working directory, e.g. /opt/tomcat/work/. This can be achieved with chown or chmod from within the shell.