Installing Tomcat 7 on Slackware 13

This entry will cover installing and configuration of Tomcat 7 on Slackware 13

It will also work for Tomcat 6.x.

We'll install the JDK, Tomcat, create a start/stop script, and configure Tomcat to run as a service and start at boot.

For this installation, we'll use Tomcat 7.0.14, the current release of Tomcat 7.

To begin, we'll install the Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.6 update 25

JDK 1.6 is the minimum JDK version required for Tomcat 7.




Download the JDK here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html

We'll use the latest, JDK 6 Update 25. The JDK is specific to 32 and 64 bit versions.

My Slackware box is 32 bit, so I'll need: jdk-6u25-linux-i586.bin

If you are on 32 bit, you'll need: jdk-6u25-linux-x64.bin

Download the JDK and save it to a directory. I'm saving it to /opt.


Create a new directory /usr/java.

root@slackd:~# mkdir /usr/java  

Change to the /usr/java directory we created and install the JDK using 'sh /opt/jdk-6u25-linux-i586.bin'

root@slackd:~# cd /usr/java
root@slackd:/usr/java# sh /opt/jdk-6u25-linux-i586.bin

Set the JAVA_HOME path to the location we installed our JDK above.

To set it for your current session, you can issue the following from the CLI:

root@slackd:/usr/java# JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_25
root@slackd:/usr/java# export JAVA_HOME
root@slackd:/usr/java# PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH
root@slackd:/usr/java# export PATH

Download apache-tomcat-7.0.14.tar.gz here

Save the file to the /usr/share directory In the /usr/share directory, unpack the file using tar -xzf:

root@slackd:~# cd /usr/share
root@slackd:/usr/share# tar -xzf apache-tomcat-7.0.14.tar.gz  

This will create the directory /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14



We will now create a simple Start/Stop/Restart script and configure Tomcat to run as a service. We will also configure Tomcat to start at boot.

Change to the /etc/rc.d directory and create a script called 'tomcat' as shown below.

root@slackd:~# cd /etc/rc.d
root@slackd:/etc/rc.d# vi rc.tomcat

#!/bin/bash
JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_25
export JAVA_HOME
PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH
export PATH
CATALINA_HOME=/usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14

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

In the above script, we are simply calling the startup.sh and shutdown.sh scripts located in the Tomcat bin directory (/usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14/bin).

CATALINA_HOME is the Tomcat home directory (/usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14)

Now, set the permissions for your script to make it executable:

root@slackd: /etc/rc.d# chmod 755 tomcat

We can now run tomcat as a background service using: /etc/rc.d/rc.tomcat start | stop | restart

Test our script.

Start Tomcat:

root@slackd:~# /etc/rc.d/rc.tomcat start
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14/temp
Using JRE_HOME:        /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_25
Using CLASSPATH:       /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14/bin/bootstrap.jar:/usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14/bin/tomcat-juli.jar

Stop Tomcat:

root@slackd:~# /etc/rc.d/rc.tomcat stop
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14/temp
Using JRE_HOME:        /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_25
Using CLASSPATH:       /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14/bin/bootstrap.jar:/usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14/bin/tomcat-juli.jar

Restarting Tomcat (Must be started first):

root@slackd:~# /etc/rc.d/rc.tomcat restart
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14/temp
Using JRE_HOME:        /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_25
Using CLASSPATH:       /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14/bin/bootstrap.jar:/usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14/bin/tomcat-juli.jar
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14/temp
Using JRE_HOME:        /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_25
Using CLASSPATH:       /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14/bin/bootstrap.jar:/usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14/bin/tomcat-juli.jar

You should review the Catalina.out log located at /usr/share/apache-tomcat-7.0.14/logs/catalina.out and check for any errors.

You should now be able to access Tomcat at:

http://yourdomain.com:8080 or http://yourIPaddress:8080 and we should see the Tomcat home page. FInally, to enable Tomcat to start at boot time, add the following lines to /etc/rc.local:

if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.tomcat ]; then
/etc/rc.d/rc.tomcat start

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