Install Tomcat 9 on Ubuntu 18.04

In this tutorial, we will install Tomcat 9.0.21 on Ubuntu 18.04.

Step 1 — Installing JDK

Tomcat 9 requires Java 8 or later versions to work. You can check and verify that Java is installed with the following command.

$ java -version

If java is not installed run below commands to install Java.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install default-jdk -y

After installation check, if java is installed correctly by executing below command

$ java -version

If java is installed, the output should look similar to above depending upon what is the latest version of java at that time.

Step 2 — Creating a Tomcat user and group

We should not run tomcat under the root user for security reasons. Let’s create a group tomcat and add a user tomcat to it. Additionally, we are going to install tomcat under /opt/tomcat directory which will be tomcat user home directory:

$ sudo groupadd tomcat
$ sudo useradd -s /bin/false -g tomcat -d /opt/tomcat tomcat

Step 3 — Download and Install Tomcat 9

Now we need to download and install Tomcat 9. You need to download the Tomcat 9 archive from its official download website or mirrors. Download and Install Tomcat 9.0.21 archive file using the following commands. You can also visit the official download page to download the latest available version.

We are going to install Tomcat to /opt directory. So we will download the Tomcat 9.0.21 package to that location.

Change directory to /opt and download Tomcat 9 to that directory.

$ cd /opt
$ sudo wget https://archive.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.21/bin/apache-tomcat-9.0.21.tar.gz

Extract the tar package and rename the extracted directory to tomcat

$ sudo tar -xvzf apache-tomcat-9.0.21.tar.gz
$ sudo mv apache-tomcat-9.0.21 /opt/tomcat

Step 4 — Change Permission and Ownership of the Tomcat home directory

Next, we will modify ownership and permission of /opt/tomcat directory. We will also give executed permission to opt/tomcat/bin/ directory.

sudo chown -R tomcat: tomcat
sudo chmod o+x /opt/tomcat/bin/

Step 5 — Creating a SystemD Service File for Tomcat

To install Tomcat as system service we will create a file called tomcat.service in the /etc/systemd/system directory.

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

Add the following to tomcat.service file

[Unit]
Description=Tomcat 9 Server
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=forking
User=tomcat
Group=tomcat
Environment="JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/default-java"
Environment="JAVA_OPTS=-Xms512m -Xmx512m"
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
UMask=0007
RestartSec=10
Restart=always
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save and exit.

Restart systemctl daemon.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

To start the tomcat service.

sudo systemctl start tomcat

To monitor the Tomcat log file.

tail -f /opt/tomcat/logs/catalina.out

If there is no error, you will get similar to below output:

We can now access tomcat at:

http://<public-ip>:8080/

Tomcat home screen

To enable Tomcat service on system boot:

sudo systemctl enable tomcat

The default Tomcat port is 8080, so we need to allow that port on Ubuntu firewall.

sudo ufw allow 8080/tcp

Check firewall status:

sudo ufw status

Step 6 — Enable and Secure Tomcat Web Application and Virtual Host Manager

Tomcat has a Web Application Manager and Virtual Host Manager app that come preinstalled. In order to use these, we have to first secure them with authentication and authorization. This is done via the tomcat-users.xml file. Open and edit tomcat-users.xml:

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

Add the following between <tomcat-users> tags and save. The roles required to access Web Application Manager and Virtual Host Manager are manager-gui and admin-gui respectively.

<role rolename="admin-gui"/>
<role rolename="manager-gui"/>
<user username="admin" password="123admin456" roles="admin-gui,manager-gui"/>

Step 7 — Configure Tomcat Web Application Manager

The Tomcat web application manager is configured to allow access only from the localhost. To allow remote access we have to edit the

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

This is not recommended for production environments!!

Open the context.xml file

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

Comment the lines as shown below

context.xml

Save and exit.

Restart tomcat service for changes to take effect.

sudo systemctl restart tomcat

After Tomcat is restarted we can access the Web Application Manager console at the following link.

http://<tomcat-public-ip>:8080/manager/html

Enter the user and password as configured in Step 6.

Step 8 — Configure Tomcat Virtual Host Manager

The Tomcat virtual host manager is configured to allow access only from the localhost. To allow remote access we have to edit the

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

This is not recommended for production environments!!

Open the context.xml file

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

Comment the lines as shown below:

Save and exit.

Restart tomcat service for changes to take effect.

sudo systemctl restart tomcat

After Tomcat is restarted we can access the Virtual Host Manager console at the following link.

http://<tomcat-public-ip>:8080/host-manager/html

Enter the user and password as configured in Step 6.

This concludes our tutorial on setting up Tomcat 9 on Ubuntu 18.04.

Please feel free to comment. Thanks.