Brekka multi-instance Tomcat DEB

Overview

Repackages a standard Apache Tomcat 8 zip distribution into a DEB archive for easy installation on Debian based Linux distributions. Also includes a set of scripts for creating and deleting independent Tomcat instances (with their own catalina.base, running under their own user account). By default the installation does not create any instances, it is left to the user to create the first and any subsequent instances.

Note that the resulting deb archive excludes the following from the standard zip:

• All of the webapps
• Any *.bat files

The following additional artifacts will be included:

• /etc/default/tomcat8 - Default configuration for all Tomcat instances.
• /usr/bin/tomcat8 - User script for starting/stopping the Tomcat instance.
• /usr/sbin/addtomcat8 - Creates a new instance.
• /usr/sbin/deltomcat8 - Deletes a previously created instance.
• /usr/sbin/tomcat8-init - Init script used to control the instances.

Requirements

Java 7 or higher must be installed. Tested with OpenJDK 7.

Releases

The latest release is 8.0.29, and can be found here: tomcat-deb-8.0.29.deb

Licence

The Apache Software License, Version 2.0 - http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html

Building

The Apache Tomcat zip must be downloaded manually and placed in the local Maven repository under the following path:

${user}/.m2/repository/org/apache/tomcat/apache-tomcat/[version]/apache-tomcat-[version].zip

Once that is in place, the project can be built using Maven 3:

mvn clean install

Usage

For these examples we use 'tomcat8' as the name of an instance, but this can be tailored to the application it will be hosting. The name of the instance will be used for the service name, run-as user and directory under '/var/lib' so it does need to be reasonably unique.

Install using dpkg:

dpkg -i tomcat_8.0.29_all.deb

Create a new instance:

addtomcat8 tomcat8

This will create a new Tomcat 8 instance under "/var/lib/tomcat8" and will run as a service under the user "tomcat8". Note that the "server.xml" configuration file must be amended prior to starting the instance if more than one instance is to be deployed. This addtomcat8 script makes no attempt to assign unique ports.

Delete an instance:

deltomcat8 tomcat8

The user will be prompted to confirm deletion of the instance. This will completely remove the instance including the configuration, logging and home directory for the instance user.

Start/Stop/Restart an instance:

service tomcat8 start/stop/restart

As root, the instance can be controlled like a regular service. If running as the instance user itself, then the 'tomcat8' script can be used to control the instance:

tomcat8 start/stop/restart