What is the recommended/standard install path for apache-tomcat on a linux box

Question

Hello I am looking to install Apache-Tomcat on a RedHat linux and I am interested if there is a standard place for this to be installed. in other work I have seen tomcat installed at

/opt/apache-tomcat-[VERSION]/

but I would expect it to be found under /usr. Best answer will have a link to authoritative site.

Thanks so much,

David.

Answer 1

Someone else mentioned http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html, which is good information. Unfortunately, they didn't provide any accompanying information with it, aside from a snarky comment.

According to that document, /opt is where installed software would go, so I would recommend /opt/tomcat, and set CATALINA_HOME to this directory.

It also says /var is where variable data would go, so I would put it in /var/tomcat and set CATALINA_BASE to this directory.

I'll add a little background. If you don't set CATALINA_BASE, then it will default to the same as CATALINA_HOME. However, CATALINA_HOME should be the unadulterated install, and should be set as read-only. You should use a different location for variable stuff like your actual web directories and logs. Then, when you need to change versions, it's just as simple as changing CATALINA_HOME. Also, you can run multiple instances of Tomcat more easily without having multiple copies of the same install.

Also, don't forget to create a CATALINA_BASE/bin/setenv.sh (or .bat for Windows) file instead of editing CATALINA_HOME/bin/catalina.sh (or .bat for Windows).

Yeah, this is more information than anyone asked for, but hopefully someone will find it useful.