In many circumstances, it is desirable to have a single copy of a Tomcat 5
binary distribution shared among multiple users on the same server. To make
this possible, you can pass a "-Dcatalina.base=$CATALINA_BASE" argument when
executing the startup command (see (2)). In this
"-Dcatalina.base=$CATALINA_BASE" argument, replace $CATALINA_BASE with the
directory that contains the files for your 'personal' Tomcat 5 instance.
When you use this "-Dcatalina.base=$CATALINA_BASE" argument, Tomcat 5 will
calculate all relative references for files in the following directories based
on the value of $CATALINA_BASE instead of $CATALINA_HOME :
* conf - Server configuration files (including server.xml)
* logs - Log and output files
* shared - For classes and resources that must be shared across all web
applications
* webapps - Automatically loaded web applications
* work - Temporary working directories for web applications
* temp - Directory used by the JVM for temporary files (java.io.tmpdir)
If you do not pass the "-Dcatalina.base=$CATALINA_BASE" argument to the startup command, $CATALINA_BASE will default to the same value as $CATALINA_HOME (which means that the same directory is used for all relative path resolutions).
The administration and manager web applications, which are defined in the
$CATALINA_BASE/conf/Catalina/localhost/admin.xml and $CATALINA_BASE/conf/Catalina/localhost/manager.xml files, will
not run in that configuration, unless either:
- The path specified in the docBase attribute of the Context element is made
absolute, and replaced respectively by $CATALINA_HOME/server/webapps/admin
and $CATALINA_HOME/server/webapps/manager
- Both web applications are copied or moved to $CATALINA_BASE, and the path specified in the docBase attribute of the Context element is modified appropriately.
- Both web applications are disabled by removing $CATALINA_BASE/conf/Catalina/localhost/admin.xml
and $CATALINA_BASE/conf/Catalina/localhost/manager.xml
(5) Troubleshooting:
There are only really 3 things likely to go wrong during the stand-alone
Tomcat 5 install:
1) The most common hiccup is when another web server (or any process for that
matter) has laid claim to port 8080. This is the default HTTP port that
Tomcat attempts to bind to at startup. To change this, open the file:
$CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml
and search for '8080'. Change it to a port that isn't in use, and is
greater than 1024, as ports less than or equal to 1024 require superuser
access to bind under UNIX.
Restart Tomcat and you're in business. Be sure that you replace the "8080"
in the URL you're using to access Tomcat. For example, if you change the
port to 1977, you would request the URL http://localhost:1977/ in your browser.
2) An "out of environment space" error when running the batch files in
Windows 95, 98, or ME operating systems.
Right-click on the STARTUP.BAT and SHUTDOWN.BAT files. Click on
"Properties", then on the "Memory" tab. For the "Initial environment" field,
enter in something like 4096.
After you click apply, Windows will create shortcuts which you can use to start and stop the container.
3) The 'localhost' machine isn't found. This could happen if you're behind a
proxy. If that's the case, make sure the proxy configuration for your
browser knows that you shouldn't be going through the proxy to access the
"localhost".
In Netscape, this is under Edit/Preferences -> Advanced/Proxies, and in
Internet Explorer, Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections -> LAN Settings.