This tutorial will help you to how to install Apache Tomcat 10 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux systems.

Prerequisites

A running Ubuntu 20.04 system with shell access of root or sudo privileged account access.

Watch on Youtube:

Step 1 – Install Java

You must have JRE (Java runtime environment) installed on your system. Tomcat 10 required to have JRE 8 or higher version installed on your system. Use the following command to install OpenJDK to fulfill the requirements.

sudo apt update  
sudo apt install default-jdk

Check the current active Java version:

java -version

Step 2 – Create Tomcat User

We recommended to run Tomcat server with a dedicated user account. Create a new user, which is recommended for security purposes mainly for production deployments.

To create a new account, type:

sudo useradd -m -d /opt/tomcat -U -s /bin/false tomcat

The above command will create a user and group with the name “tomcat” in your system.

Step 3 – Install Tomcat 10

The Apache Tomcat development team releases the latest version of Tomcat from time to time. So it will be good to check to download the latest Tomcat version from the official download server. Use the below command to download Tomcat 10.

wget https://mirrors.estointernet.in/apache/tomcat/tomcat-10/v10.0.5/bin/apache-tomcat-10.0.5.tar.gz

Once the download completed, extract the downloaded archive and copy all content to the tomcat home directory.

sudo tar xzvf apache-tomcat-10.0.5.tar.gz -C /opt/tomcat --strip-components=1

Next, set the proper file permissions.

sudo chown -R tomcat:tomcat /opt/tomcat/ 
sudo chmod -R u+x /opt/tomcat/bin

You have now the latest Tomcat application on your system.

Step 4 – Create Tomcat User

Now, configure your tomcat with user accounts to secure access to admin/manager pages. To do this, edit conf/tomcat-users.xml file in your editor and paste the following code inside <tomcat-users> </tomcat-users> tags. We recommend changing the password in the below configuration with high secured password.

sudo nano /opt/tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml

Add the following values. Make sure to change the password for admin and manager access.

<!-- user manager can access only manager section -->
<role rolename="manager-gui" />
<user username="manager" password="Your_Password" roles="manager-gui" />

<!-- user admin can access manager and admin section both -->
<role rolename="admin-gui" />
<user username="admin" password="Your_Password" roles="manager-gui,admin-gui" />

Save file and close.

Step 5 – Enable Remote Tomcat Access

The default Tomcat manager and host-manager applications are accessible for localhost only. To allow access these pages from the remote system, you need to modify the following configuration files.

You can either allow specific remote system or allow all. Edit the context.xml file for the manager and host manager application:

sudo nano /opt/tomcat/webapps/manager/META-INF/context.xml

Comment out the section added for IP address restriction to allow connections from anywhere.

<Context antiResourceLocking="false" privileged="true" >
  <CookieProcessor className="org.apache.tomcat.util.http.Rfc6265CookieProcessor"
                   sameSiteCookies="strict" />
  <!-- <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve" allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" /> --> ... </Context>

Similarly edit context.xml for host-manager application in the text editor:

sudo nano /opt/tomcat/webapps/host-manager/META-INF/context.xml

Comment out the same section to allow connections from anywhere.

<Context antiResourceLocking="false" privileged="true" >
  <CookieProcessor className="org.apache.tomcat.util.http.Rfc6265CookieProcessor"
                   sameSiteCookies="strict" />
  <!--<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve"
         allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" /> -->
  ...
</Context>

Save all files and close them.

Step 6 – Create a Tomcat Systemd Unit File

Tomcat provides bash scripts to start, stop service. But, to make it simpler, create a startup script to manage Tomcat as systemd service. Let’s create a tomcat.service file with the following content:

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

[Unit]
Description=Tomcat
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking

User=tomcat
Group=tomcat

Environment="JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.11.0-openjdk-amd64"
Environment="JAVA_OPTS=-Djava.security.egd=file:///dev/urandom"
Environment="CATALINA_BASE=/opt/tomcat"
Environment="CATALINA_HOME=/opt/tomcat"
Environment="CATALINA_PID=/opt/tomcat/temp/tomcat.pid"
Environment="CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms512M -Xmx1024M -server -XX:+UseParallelGC"

ExecStart=/opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
ExecStop=/opt/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Reload the systemd daemon service to load newly create files.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Now, start the Tomcat application for the first time.

sudo systemctl start tomcat.service

Next, enable the tomcat service to auto start for subsequent system boots. This is more important for the production deployments.

sudo systemctl enable tomcat.service

As of now, the tomcat application is running on your system. You can verify the service status by executing the command as below. Make sure the status is showing “active (running)“.

sudo systemctl status tomcat.service

Step 7 – Access the Tomcat Web Interface

The default Tomcat server runs on port 8080. As you have configured Tomcat on your system, you can access the web interface from your system. You can access tomcat interfaces by entering your server’s IP address or a domain name pointed to that server, followed by port 8080 in your browser:

http://localhost:8080/

You will see the page like below:

Conclusion

You have a running Tomcat server on the Ubuntu 20.04 system.