How To Install Apache Tomcat on CentOS 7

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Apache Tomcat on CentOS 7. For those of you who didn’t know, Apache Tomcat is an open-source web server and servlet container developed by the Apache Software Foundation. It implements the Java Servlet, JavaServer Pages (JSP), Java Unified Expression Language, and Java WebSocket specifications from Sun Microsystems and provides a web server environment for Java code to run in.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Apache Tomcat on the CentOS 7 server.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS 7.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Apache Tomcat on CentOS 7

Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.

yum clean all
yum -y update

Step 2. Installing Java 8.

Apache Tomcat 9 requires Java 8 or newer to be installed on the server. Run the following command to install Java 8:

yum install java-1.8.0-openjdk.x86_64 java-1.8.0-openjdk-devel.x86_64

Once installed, You can also verify it, by issuing the following command:

java -version

Step 3. Install Apache Tomcat 9 on CentoS 7.

First, go to the official Apache Tomcat website and download the most recent version of the software to your server. At the moment the most recent release is version 9.0.7:

wget http://www.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.7/bin/apache-tomcat-9.0.7.zip

Unpack the downloaded zip archive:

unzip apache-tomcat-9.0.7.zip -d /opt

Next, create a new directory named ‘apache-tomcat-9.0.7’. We will rename it to something simpler:

cd /opt
mv apache-tomcat-9.0.7/ tomcat

Then, run the following commands to set the CATALINA_HOME environment variable:

echo "export CATALINA_HOME='/opt/tomcat/'" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

It is not recommended to run Apache Tomcat as user root, so add tomcat user and group:

useradd -r tomcat --shell /bin/false
chown -R tomcat:tomcat /opt/tomcat/

Now, Create a systemd file with the following content:

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

[Unit]
Description=Apache Tomcat 9
After=syslog.target network.target[Service]
User=tomcat
Group=tomcat
Type=forking
Environment=CATALINA_PID=/opt/tomcat/tomcat.pid
Environment=CATALINA_HOME=/opt/tomcat
Environment=CATALINA_BASE=/opt/tomcat
ExecStart=/opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
ExecStop=/opt/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
Restart=on-failure

[Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save the file and run the following command to reload the systemd manager:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start tomcat
systemctl enable tomcat

Step 4. Assessing Apache Tomcat 9.

Finally, open Tomcat from your browser, and go to your IP or domain with the 8080 port (because Tomcat will always run on the 8080 port) as an example: http://your_IP_address:8080/manager/html using user ‘admin’ and password ‘PASSWORD’

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Apache Tomcat. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Apache Tomcat on CentOS 7 systems. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Apache Tomcat website.