Is your Debian install of Tomcat 5.5 not working with your Webapp?
Just a heads up for anyone with problems trying to get webapps working with Debian. I highly recommend installing Tomcat 6.0 from source. It helped clear a number of issues for me. Debian only supports Tomcat 5.5 in their package management system. I could have gone with unstable to get Tomcat 6.0, but I prefer not to deal with their folder organization layout (see below)
Here are a few resources I’ve used to install Tomcat 6.0 in Debian Lenny.
- How to Install Tomcat 6 in Debian Lenny. This is an excellent step-by-step tutorial. A+ in my book.
- http://www.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/ Connector/J, MySQL JDBC Connector download.
- http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/jndi-datasource-examples-howto.html. Tomcat 6.0 configuration with MySQL Connector/J JDBC.
The Connector/J install process was easy. It was a matter of dropping in the mysql-connector-java-5.1.13-bin.jar file inside your tomcat/lib directory and setting up the context path configuration. A few restarts of the tomcat service and my JSP application was working.
Reasons to Install Tomcat 6.0 from Source:
- Debian supports only Tomcat 5.5 in their stable release. Tomcat 6.0.29 is currently the latest version as of 11/15/2010. This is a major issue if your application requires Tomcat 6.
- The default Debian configuration of Tomcat. I prefer having the configuration in one place as opposed to 3 places with the Debian uses (/etc/tomcat5.5, /var/lib/tomcat5.5, and /usr/share/tomcat5.5) I’ve read cases where people are storing their webapps inside /usr/share/tomcat5.5, which is scary since Debian will overwrite the contents in that folder in an update.
- Slowness with Tomcat 5.5. Starting and ending the tomcat process was significantly slower in Debian’s Tomcat 5.5 package vs. 6.0 built from source.
