Configure Tomcat service linux

These instructions are related to installing and running Tomcat 7 as a service, which means that will be launched at system boot and will be closed properly on system shutdown.

Running as a Linux Service

For security reasons you shouldn't run Tomcat as root. It is better to create a user named openkm and run Tomcat from him:

$ sudo adduser openkm

Create a file with the script:

$ sudo vim /etc/init.d/tomcat

#!/bin/sh

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          tomcat
# Required-Start:    $remote_fs $syslog
# Required-Stop:     $remote_fs $syslog
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: Start and stop Apache Tomcat
# Description:       Enable Apache Tomcat service provided by daemon.
### END INIT INFO
 
ECHO=/bin/echo
TEST=/usr/bin/test
TOMCAT_USER=openkm
TOMCAT_HOME=/home/openkm/tomcat-7.0.27
TOMCAT_START_SCRIPT=$TOMCAT_HOME/bin/startup.sh
TOMCAT_STOP_SCRIPT=$TOMCAT_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh
 
$TEST -x $TOMCAT_START_SCRIPT || exit 0
$TEST -x $TOMCAT_STOP_SCRIPT || exit 0
 
start() {
    $ECHO -n "Starting Tomcat"
    su - $TOMCAT_USER -c "$TOMCAT_START_SCRIPT &"
    $ECHO "."
}
 
stop() {
    $ECHO -n "Stopping Tomcat"
    su - $TOMCAT_USER -c "$TOMCAT_STOP_SCRIPT 60 -force &"
    while [ "$(ps -fu $TOMCAT_USER | grep java | grep tomcat | wc -l)" -gt "0" ]; do
        sleep 5; $ECHO -n "."
    done
    $ECHO "."
}
 
case "$1" in
    start)
        start
        ;;
    stop)
        stop
        ;;
    restart)
        stop
        sleep 30
        start
        ;;
    *)
        $ECHO "Usage: tomcat {start|stop|restart}"
        exit 1
esac
exit 0

And make it executable:

$ sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/tomcat

Now update the run-levels:

$ sudo update-rc.d tomcat defaults
 Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/tomcat ...
   /etc/rc0.d/K20tomcat -> ../init.d/tomcat
   /etc/rc1.d/K20tomcat -> ../init.d/tomcat
   /etc/rc6.d/K20tomcat -> ../init.d/tomcat
   /etc/rc2.d/S20tomcat -> ../init.d/tomcat
   /etc/rc3.d/S20tomcat -> ../init.d/tomcat
   /etc/rc4.d/S20tomcat -> ../init.d/tomcat
   /etc/rc5.d/S20tomcat -> ../init.d/tomcat

start Tomcat service:

$ sudo service tomcat start

stop Tomcat service:

$ sudo service tomcat stop

It's also a good idea to configure Tomcat memory utilization. Edit the file $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/setenv.sh and edit the parameter JAVA_OPTS where you can increase the system memory managed by the JVM (Java Virtual Machine):

JAVA_OPTS="-Xms256m -Xmx1024m -XX:PermSize=128m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m -Djava.awt.headless=true -Dfile.encoding=utf-8"
JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -Dlog4j.configuration=file://$CATALINA_HOME/conf/log4j.properties"
CATALINA_PID=$CATALINA_HOME/catalina.pid
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$CATALINA_HOME/lib/sigar

This example is for a system with 2 GB of RAM.

Configure on Redhat / CentOS

$ chkconfig tomcat --level 2345 on

From here until the end should be the same as in Ubuntu / Debian.