Taming the Elusive Tomcat

joeyslopp writes: "Finding documentation on an open source project such as FreeBSD is usually quite easy. In fact, the project relies heavily upon user support. However, tracking down a good article that illustrates how to setup a .jsp (java server pages) environment using Tomcat has been difficult. Devshed came close with their article Slapping Together A JSP Development Environment , but lacked specifics on JDK for FreeBSD -- their article was more specific to Linux. The studs in #freebsd on undernet enlightened me a bit more, but still I lacked concrete documenation. Where can one find descriptive help in setting up Tomcat for FreeBSD? Dun dun dun dun *cheesy superhero theme* Enter Victoria Chan's article seemingly tailor-made for my Tomcat woes. The article, also located here, actually appears on www.freebsd.org as well...imagine that :) Hopefully other newbies to FreeBSD will read this and shorten their search time for a good article on the setup of Tomcat."

Comments

Re:as a official operator of #java on efnet

[Raskolnk]

I agree for with the recs for resin and orion, however, I wouldn't stay away from tomcat. IMHO, its very useful for developers to develop in tomcat in diverse environments before moving to a higher performing production environment. That way they can focus on building a proper war format app that should be portable to Resin, Orion, iPlanet, etc. Because Tomcat is supposed to be the reference version, ideally everyone would at least have there app setup and working in it.

RTFM!

[Hard_Code]

Christ, they're right here dammit. The docs are great, watchoo talkin' 'bout Willis...

If that's not enough, go grab the servlet spec from Sun. It's really not that hard.

Re:RTFM!

[josepha48]

This guy is a moron! I have tomcat running on both my Linux box AND my windows box. All it takes is reading the F****** manual as you say!

Step 1 get Java 1.3+ (1.4 better)

Step 2 get apache 1.3+

Step 3 get tomcat 4.0+ and mod_jk

Step 4 install all of the above.

Step 5 Create a workers.properties file.

Step 6 Create a mod_jk.conf file or let tomcat do it for you. If you let tomcat create one for you copy it and use the copy not the one created as it may overwrite this file. There is a way to shut this on and off, but that is in the manual.

Step 7 Add a line in apache's httpd.conf file to include the mod_jk.conf file

Step 8 Edit the mod_jk.conf file to include your new jsp pages directory. This will require you setting up the directive as per apache documentation. Look in http.conf for examples.

Step 9 add the 'connectors'. There are the JkMount directives.

Step 10 start it all up and test it out. Pretty much worked for me.

WEB-INF/classes is where your .class files go and there is a place for glocal jars and global classes as well as private classes and private servlets etc.

Alternately youy could just get tomcat and java and run it without apache if all you are doing is jsp. It is really not that difficult and there is a whole web site dedicated to this. Its called jakarta.apache.org. try it.

Re:as a official operator of #java on efnet

[mrdlinux]

Speaking of which, I find CMU Common Lisp w/IMHO to be a better web application environment than Tomcat or any crappy Java servlet-type thing. And it's easier to setup too, amazingly. I do not know how it would perform under extremely heavy loads though. Perhaps AllegroServe with Allegro CL would be better in that situation.

Starting Point

[Martin Spamer]

You could using one of the free (as in beer) community editions of the IDE's. CE editions of JBuilder and Forte come pre-configured with TOMCAT.

Jakarta

[Martin Spamer]

http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/

http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-3.2-
do c/index.html
http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/tom cat-3.3-doc/in dex.html

Re:RTFM? RTFQ

[josepha48]

The question was not about setting up Java but Tomcat. If it was about Java then the person should not have asked "Where can one find descriptive help in setting up Tomcat for FreeBSD?" They should have asked "Where can one find descriptive help in setting up Java for FreeBSD so that they can run Tomcat?"

The title of the article was about Tomcat NOT Java.

Give me access to a FreeBSD box and then we'll talk. I only have NetBSD / Linux and Windows at the moment.

The steps above are generic. They apply to ALL platforms. If there is an inadequate jdk for FreeBSD then that is not my fault. Linux users got togeather at www.blackdown.org to release Java for Linux LONG before Sun supported it. Maybe FreeBSD people who are intereseted in a better port of java to Linux should talk to someone over there and maybe they can make a more generic jdk that will work better on FreeBSD.

Re:RTFM? RTFQ

[josepha48]

Oh and I found a JDK for FreeBSD as well as a whole bunch of Java port. I think make install may be what he needs to do. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/url.cgi?ports/java/jdk1 2-beta/pkg-descr

man tar?

[ahde]

what else is needed?

Maybe 'cat README' or 'ls'