How To Install Apache Tomcat on Ubuntu 12.04

Status: Deprecated

This article covers a version of Ubuntu that is no longer supported. If you are currently operate a server running Ubuntu 12.04, we highly recommend upgrading or migrating to a supported version of Ubuntu:

• Upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04.
• Upgrade from Ubuntu 14.04 to Ubuntu 16.04
• Migrate the server data to a supported version

Reason: Ubuntu 12.04 reached end of life (EOL) on April 28, 2017 and no longer receives security patches or updates. This guide is no longer maintained.

See Instead:
This guide might still be useful as a reference, but may not work on other Ubuntu releases. If available, we strongly recommend using a guide written for the version of Ubuntu you are using. You can use the search functionality at the top of the page to find a more recent version.

About Apache Tomcat

Apache tomcat is a Java based application server released by the Apache Software Foundation. It is a web server and a servlet container for Java web applications.

Setup

Tomcat installation on a virtual private server is relatively easy. Its single required dependency is Java and this tutorial will include a step on how to install that platform.

You do need to have a user with sudo privileges for this tutorial.

Step One—Install Tomcat

The most recent version of Tomcat is 7, and it can be easily downloaded through apt-get or from the Apache Tomcat site.

You can download it through apt-get by typing:

sudo apt-get install tomcat7

To download tomcat from their site, copy the link for the tar.gz package under the “Core” section and begin the download. You will get a link that originates from one of Apache’s many mirrors, making the command look mostly like this (although coming from a different site).

wget http://apache.mivzakim.net/tomcat/tomcat-7/v7.0.57/bin/apache-tomcat-7.0.57.tar.gz

After the download completes, untar the file.

tar xvzf apache-tomcat-7.0.57.tar.gz

Finish up the Tomcat installation on the VPS by moving the files to a convenient directory.

sudo mv apache-tomcat-7.0.57  ~/path/to/tomcat

Step Two—Install Java

We installed the entire Apache Tomcat server on our virtual server in the previous step. Before we can use it, however, we do need to have Java installed on the VPS as well. If you currently do not have java, you can download it quite easily with apt-get.

sudo apt-get install default-jdk

Once you have Tomcat and Java installed on the virtual private server, all that remains is to start them.

Step Three—Configure .bashrc

In order to start Tomcat, we need to add it as an environment variable in the /.bashrc file.

sudo nano ~/.bashrc

You can add this information to the end of the file:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/default-java

export CATALINA_HOME=~/path/to/tomcat

Save and exit out of .bashrc. You can make the changes effective by restarting the bashrc file.

. ~/.bashrc

Step Four—RESULTS

Tomcat is now installed and configured on our virtual servers. However, it is not yet activated.

The final step is to activate Tomcat by running its startup script:

$CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh

Once that runs, Tomcat is up and ready on port 8080.

You can visually verify that Tomcat is working by accessing your server page at your_IP_address:8080.

It should look like this