2.5.4. Running Tomcat

Procedure 2.14. Running Tomcat on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

1. After extracting the zip file, check to see if a user called tomcat exists on the system by running the following command:

   id tomcat

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2. If the user does not exist, use the following command to add it:

   groupadd -g 91 -r tomcat
   useradd -c "Tomcat" -u 91 -g tomcat -s /bin/sh -r tomcat

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3. If the tomcat user will be running Tomcat, change the ownership of the tomcat directories.
   1. Use the following command for Tomcat 6:

      chown -R tomcat:tomcat tomcat6

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      • Use the following command for Tomcat 7:

        chown -R tomcat:tomcat tomcat7

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4. Test that the tomcat user has execution permission to the tomcat install path.
5. Set the JAVA_HOME variable. Use one of the following approaches to set this variable.
   1. Provide the value for JAVA_HOME externally by setting the value prior to starting Tomcat.
      • Set the value for JAVA_HOME in the setenv.sh file. In Tomcat 6, this file is available at tomcat6/bin/ and in Tomcat 7, this file is available at tomcat7/bin/. This value is loaded from catalina.sh and overrides all other set values for JAVA_HOME.