JavaServer Pages, 3rd Edition

Unix Platforms (Including Linux and Mac OS X)

For Unix platforms, you can download the jakarta-tomcat-5.0.12.tar.gz file, for instance to /usr/local, and use these commands to unpack it (assuming you have GNU tar installed):

[hans@gefion /] cd /usr/local
[hans@gefion local] tar xzvf jakarta-tomcat-5.0.12.tar.gz

If you don’t have GNU tar installed on your system, use the following command:

[hans@gefion local] gunzip -c jakarta-tomcat-5.0.12.tar.gz | tar xvf -

As on Windows, this creates a directory structure with a top directory named jakarta-tomcat-5.0.12 with a number of subdirectories.

You should also set the CATALINA_HOME environment variable to point to the Tomcat installation directory:

[hans@gefion local] export CATALINA_HOME=/usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.12

If you wonder about the variable name, Catalina is the name of the servlet container and Jasper is the name of the JSP container; together they are known as the Tomcat server.

The Tomcat installation directory contains a number of subdirectories, described later. The bin directory contains Unix scripts for starting and stopping the server. The scripts area named startup.sh, shutdown.sh, and catalina.sh.

Start the server in the background with this command:

[hans@gefion jakarta-tomcat-5.0.12] ./startup.sh

If you want to have Tomcat start each time you boot the system, you can add the following commands to your /etc/rc.d/rc.local (or equivalent) startup script:

                  export JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/jdk1.4.2
                  export CATALINA_HOME=/usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.12 ...