Tomcat: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

Automatic Startup

Once you have Tomcat installed and running, you can set it to start automatically when your system reboots. This will ensure that every time your system comes up, Tomcat will be running and handling requests. Unix users will make changes to their init scripts, and Windows users will need to set Tomcat up as a service. Both approaches are outlined in this section.

Automatic Startup on Linux

If you've installed Tomcat via an RPM package, getting it to run on a reboot is just a matter of telling your system to run the tomcat or tomcat55 service (depending on which RPM package you installed) when it enters a multiuser run level.

Tip

If you know how to use chkconfig, as the root user you can simply chkconfig tomcat on for the run level(s) of your choice.

Use the chkconfig command to make the tomcat service start in the run level(s) of your choice. Here's an example of how to make it start in run levels 2, 3, 4, and 5:

# chkconfig --level 2345 tomcat on

Tip

If chkconfig does not see the tomcat service, try tomcat55 instead (the JPackage.org RPM package's init script has this name). Otherwise, you probably did not install Tomcat as an RPM package. Below, we show how to add a simple init script to make it work anyway.

Now, query your configuration to make sure that startup is actually set:

# chkconfig --list tomcat
tomcat    0:off   1:off   2:on   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

Now, reboot and see if Tomcat starts up when the system comes back up.

If you didn't use the RPM package to install Tomcat, ...