Tomcat

Installing Tomcat on macOS 13.x Ventura

Apache Tomcat 10.1.8 implements specifications that are part of the Jakarta EE 10 platform. Please note that applications that ran on Tomcat 9 and earlier will not run on Tomcat 10 without changes. Java EE based applications designed for Tomcat 9 and earlier may be placed in the $CATALINA_BASE/webapps-javaee directory and Tomcat will automatically convert them to Jakarta EE and copy them to the webapps directory.

Prerequisite: Java

Tomcat 10.1 is designed to run on Java 11 and later. However, since OS X 10.7 Java is not (pre-)installed anymore. Let’s fix that by installing a Prebuilt OpenJDK Binary. Easy to follow details about how to install OpenJDK are available here. Anyway, after opening the Terminal app,
java --version
hopefully shows something like this:

openjdk version "19.0.1" 2022-10-18
OpenJDK Runtime Environment Temurin-19.0.1+10 (build 19.0.1+10)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM Temurin-19.0.1+10 (build 19.0.1+10, mixed mode, sharing)

Whatever you do, when opening Terminal and running ‘java –version’, you should see something like this, with a version of at least 11 Again, Tomcat 10.1 is designed to run on Java 11 and later.

sudo
sudo is a program for Unix-like operating systems, allowing you to run programs with the security privileges of another user (normally the superuser, or root). Since we are creating directories, outside of your home folder, administrator right are required. I.e., when executing sudo you will be asked to enter your password; and your Mac User account needs to be an ‘Admin’ account.

JAVA_HOME is an important environment variable, not just for Tomcat, and it’s important to get it right. Here is a trick that allows me to keep the environment variable current, even after a Java Update was installed. In ~/.zshenv, I set the variable like so:

export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home)

Installing Tomcat

Here are the easy to follow steps to get it up and running on your Mac

  1. Download a binary distribution of the core module: apache-tomcat-10.1.x from here. I picked the tar.gz in Binary Distributions Core section.
  2. Opening/unarchiving the archive will create a new folder structure in your Downloads folder: (btw, this free Unarchiver app is perfect for all kinds of compressed files and superior to the built-in Archive Utility.app)
    ~/Downloads/apache-tomcat-10.1.8
  3. Open the Terminal app to move the unarchived distribution to /usr/local like so:
    sudo mkdir -p /usr/local
    sudo mv ~/Downloads/apache-tomcat-10.1.8 /usr/local
  4. To make it easy to replace this release with future releases, we are going to create a symbolic link that we are going to use when referring to Tomcat (after removing the old link, you might have from installing a previous version):
    sudo rm -f /Library/Tomcat
    sudo ln -s /usr/local/apache-tomcat-10.1.8 /Library/Tomcat
  5. Change ownership of the /Library/Tomcat folder hierarchy:
    sudo chown -RL $USER /Library/Tomcat
  6. Make all scripts in Tomcat’s ./bin folder executable:
    sudo chmod +x /Library/Tomcat/bin/*.sh

Tomcat 10.1.x

Starting Tomcat by executing the provided scripts, like so:
/Library/Tomcat/bin/startup.sh

Using CATALINA_BASE:   /Library/Tomcat
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /Library/Tomcat
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /Library/Tomcat/temp
Using JRE_HOME:        /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/temurin-19.jdk/Contents/Home
Using CLASSPATH:       /Library/Tomcat/bin/bootstrap.jar:/Library/Tomcat/bin/tomcat-juli.jar
Using CATALINA_OPTS:   
Tomcat started.

Finally, after your started Tomcat, open your Mac’s Web browser and take a look at the default page: http://localhost:8080

 

Tomcat 10.1.4

Stopping Tomcat by executing the provided scripts, like so:

/Library/Tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh

Using CATALINA_BASE:   /Library/Tomcat
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /Library/Tomcat
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /Library/Tomcat/temp
Using JRE_HOME:        /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/temurin-19.jdk/Contents/Home
Using CLASSPATH:       /Library/Tomcat/bin/bootstrap.jar:/Library/Tomcat/bin/tomcat-juli.jar
Using CATALINA_OPTS:   

 

Uninstalling Tomcat

Uninstalling Tomcat is even easier. However, please keep in mind that all the web apps that you might have installed will be removed as well.

sudo rm -f /Library/Tomcat
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/apache-tomcat-10.1.8

 

 

One Reply to “Tomcat”

  1. What a great tutorial! Thank you for it. Got Tomcat 10.1.8 working on my M1 Ventura machine.

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