Tomcat Setup for Developers

At Yale several systems run in production under the Tomcat Java Web Server. A developer wants to install Tomcat on his own desktop in a configuration that will allow meaningful code debugging of applications eventually intended to move to production.

Tomcat can be downloaded from tomcat.apache.org. It is distributed in several forms. Generally a developer should download the generic zip or tar file, which deploys a "pure Java" version. Tomcat can run with native libraries that speed up execution, which is probably not necessary during debugging.The main difference between pure Java and native libraries is that the installation of an SSL certificate changes. Pure Java uses Java JKS files and the JDK "keytool" utility, while native libraries use OpenSSL tools and file formats. Production programs are typically accessed using SSL, but the certificate is installed and the SSL terminates at the F5 frontend. Sandbox testing can typically use non-SSL HTTP.

On a windows system, unzip the Tomcat to a directory on your C: drive unless you have installed ALL your Java development files on another disk letter. Production systems run on Unix and sometimes an application has to configure an external file path. If Tomcat, Eclipse, and all the Java tools are installed on the same disk and you can assume the current directory will always be on that disk, then you can create /etc, /var, or /webfarm directories on that disk and use path names that will work on both Unix and Windows.

A suggestion is to create a parent /appservers directory into which you can put one or more versions of Tomcat and JBoss for various development projects. Since each application expects to be alone in its own Tomcat, install a separate copy of Tomcat for each application on which you are working. Name the Tomcat for the project on which you are working and make sure that you can configure external files (log files, JKS keystores, Kerberos keytabs) separate by project. The tendency of production systems to dump application logs in a /var/logs/jboss directory is not fatal if the log files have separate names that are application specific, but if the files are all DEV.log then you have a collision if you work on more than one project on the same disk.

To solve this problem, a Windows 7 or later user may choose to create a virtual disk file (VHD) with all the files for working on a single project. Windows 7 can mount a VHD file as if it was a separate hard disk and assign it a disk letter, so it will have its own /etc and /var directories to keep things straight without requiring you to give up a physical hard disk partition.

If you develop in Linux, you want to install Tomcat from Apache and not use the Ubuntu or Red Hat package installation system. Package installation creates one specific server configured for use as a real production server, not many parallel servers separately configured for development purposes.