Setting User Environment Variables for tomcat on Windows

Question

I am running tomcat 8 on windows 2012.

I have a webapp that needs an user environment variable to be set in order to run.

I can start tomcat and retrieve the variable successfully like this:

set JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_65
set CATALINA_HOME=C:\TOOLS\apache-tomcat-8.0.30

set CATALINA_BASE=C:\Users\ULUser\tomcat\myapp
set MY_VAR=%CATALINA_BASE%
set PATH=%CATALINA_ROOT%\bin;%PATH%
set CATALINA_OPTS="-Djava.security.properties=%CATALINA_BASE%\conf\java.security.properties"

%CATALINA_HOME%\bin\catalina.bat run

But when I run as a windows service I cannot retrieve the MY_VAR variable using System.getenv("MY_VAR");

Googling has not helped because all the pages show how to set the Java and Tomcat variables, but not how to set user variables.

I cannot set it for the entire machine because I have several instances of tomcat and each one needs a different environment variable.

I would prefer a method that involves setting the variable in the tomcat configuration rather that with windows configuration.

My alternative is to use context.xml file in tomcat and retrieve the value with logic that retrieves context settings.

I originally posted this on superuser, but it was suggested that stackoverflow is a better place for this question. If I get good answers here I will delete it off of superuser.

Answer 1

Had the same problem and I've just managed to solve it.

From an admin command prompt do the following command:

tomcat8 //US//YourServiceName ++Environment varname=value

You can set more than one variable by separating them with a semicolon (;) or a hash (#). The documentation is quite clear, but it's just difficult to believe anything's happened, because there's no visual indication anywhere, meaning if you run:

tomcat8w //ES//YourServiceName 

to get the GUI config tool you will not see the environment variable anywhere, but if you run the service it will pick it up. It's like hidden magic. Don't know why they haven't included it somewhere in the config panel.