Tomcat 6 is a popular web application server. It is free and open source software, and it can be installed on Ubuntu using the Ubuntu Software Center. To install Tomcat 6 on Ubuntu, first open the Ubuntu Software Center and search for the Tomcat 6 package. Once the package is found, click on it to install it. Once Tomcat 6 is installed, you can start it by typing its name into a terminal window. For example, if you are running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, type: sudo apt-get install tomcat6

Before you install Tomcat you’ll want to make sure that you’ve installed Java. I would assume if you are trying to install Tomcat you’ve already installed java, but if you aren’t sure you can check with the dpkg command like so:

This should give you this output if you already installed java:

If that command has no results, you’ll want to install the latest version with this command:

Installation

Now we’ll download and extract Tomcat from the apache site. You should check to make sure there’s not another version and adjust accordingly.

The best thing to do is move the tomcat folder to a permanent location. I chose /usr/local/tomcat, but you could move it somewhere else if you wanted to.

tar xvzf apache-tomcat-6.0.14.tar.gz

Tomcat requires setting the JAVA_HOME variable. The best way to do this is to set it in your .bashrc file. You could also edit your startup.sh file if you so chose.

The better method is editing your .bashrc file and adding the bolded line there. You’ll have to logout of the shell for the change to take effect.

Add the following line:

At this point you can start tomcat by just executing the startup.sh script in the tomcat/bin folder.

Automatic Starting

To make tomcat automatically start when we boot up the computer, you can add a script to make it auto-start and shutdown.

Now paste in the following:

You’ll need to make the script executable by running the chmod command:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

case $1 instart)        sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh        ;; stop)           sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh        ;; restart)        sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh        sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh        ;; esac    exit 0

The last step is actually linking this script to the startup folders with a symbolic link. Execute these two commands and we should be on our way.

Tomcat should now be fully installed and operational. Enjoy!