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In this tutorial, we will teach you how to install Tomcat 9 on Ubuntu 16.04.
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat, previously known for Jakarta Tomcat or just Tomcat, is an open source web server servlet container developed by the Apache Software Foundation. It runs Java servlets and renders Web pages which include Java Server Page coding and is one of the most popular web servers used by Java developers.
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Install Tomcat 9 on Ubuntu 16.04
In this tutorial, you are going to install the latest release of Tomcat 9 server on an Ubuntu 16.04 VPS.
This guide will work on other Debian based systems, however, it was made and tested for Ubuntu 16.04.
Step 1: Log into the Server via SSH.
First, log into the Ubuntu 16.04 VPS via SSH as user root.
ssh root@IP_address
Step 2: Initiate a new screen session.
screen -U -S tomcat9
Step 3: Updating All System Packages.
In order to update the packages installed on your server, execute the command below in the terminal.
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
Step 4: Installing Java
If you want to run the Tomcat server then Java needs to be installed on the VPS. Run the command below to Install the Java Development Kit package (JDK).
apt-get install default-jdk
Once the installation is finished. You can check if Java was installed on the server using the following command.
java -version
If you get an output similar to the one below, the installation was successful.
openjdk version "1.8.0_91" OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_91-8u91-b14-0ubuntu4~16.04.1-b14) OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.91-b14, mixed mode)
After Java is installed on the server, you can continue installing Tomcat 9.
Step 5: Install and Configure Tomcat 9.
For security reasons, we recommend that you do not run Tomcat as user root. For this reason, you must create a new system user.
useradd -r tomcat9 --shell /bin/false
Change the current working directory to ‘/opt’ and download the latest Tomcat 9 release to the ‘/opt’ directory on your server.
When this tutorial was made, the latest Tomcat version was 9.0.0.M6. You will need to go to Tomcat’s official website to check if there is a newer version available.
cd /opt wget http://mirror.symnds.com/software/Apache/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.0.M9/bin/apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M9.tar.gz
Extract the content of the archive into a directory.
tar -zxf apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M6.tar.gz
Now create a symbolic link for the Tomcat directory to ‘/opt/tomcat-latest’ and set the appropriate ownership.
ln -s apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M6 tomcat-latest chown -hR tomcat9: tomcat-latest apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M6
Tomcat can now be started, stopped and restarted using the bash scripts located in the ‘/opt/tomcat-latest/bin’ directory or, even better, you can just create a ‘system init’ file for this purpose.
nano /etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service
Append the following content to the file:
[Unit] Description=Tomcat9 After=network.target [Service] Type=forking User=tomcat9 Group=tomcat9 Environment=CATALINA_PID=/opt/tomcat-latest/tomcat9.pid Environment=JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.8.0-openjdk-amd64 Environment=CATALINA_HOME=/opt/tomcat-latest Environment=CATALINA_BASE=/opt/tomcat-latest Environment="CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms512m -Xmx512m" Environment="JAVA_OPTS=-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -Dnet.sf.ehcache.skipUpdateCheck=true -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled -XX:+UseParNewGC" ExecStart=/opt/tomcat-latest/bin/startup.sh ExecStop=/opt/tomcat-latest/bin/shutdown.sh [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
Save the file, reload the system daemon, and start the Tomcat server before enabling it to start on boot.
systemctl daemon-reload systemctl start tomcat systemctl enable tomcat
Final Thoughts
Lastly, if you have closely followed the steps above, you should be able to access Tomcat by using a web browser of your choosing and going to ‘http://your_server_IP:8080′.
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