Create a server using AWS or any cloud or virtual machine for tomcat installation

If you are using cloud server, then access it by git bash or putty

ssh -i <Key Pair Path> <user>@<ip_address_of_server>

Next, update the package manager cache by running

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y

Then, install the jdk by running the following command

sudo apt install openjdk-11-jdk -y

Now check the version of the available Java installation

java -version

Create a directory as /opt/tomcat

sudo mkdir -p /opt/tomcat

Create a tomcat user for separate user for a tomcat service

sudo useradd tomcat

Change directory to /tmp directory

cd /tmp

Download tomcat archive using wget command

wget https://dlcdn.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-10/v10.0.27/bin/apache-tomcat-10.0.27.tar.gz

Extract the archive file into /opt/tomcat directory

sudo tar -xvf apache-tomcat-10.0.27.tar.gz -C /opt/tomcat

We can now grant tomcat ownership over the extracted installation

sudo chown -R tomcat:tomcat /opt/tomcat/
sudo chmod -R u+x /opt/tomcat/bin

Next, open /opt/tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml file for configuring tomcat users

sudo vi /opt/tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml

Next, add the following lines before the ending tag /opt/tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml

<role rolename="manager-gui"/>
<role rolename="manager-script"/>
<role rolename="manager-jmx"/>
<role rolename="manager-status"/>
<user username="admin" password="admin" roles="manager-gui, manager-script, manager-jmx, manager-status"/>
<user username="deployer" password="deployer" roles="manager-script"/>
<user username="tomcat" password="tomcat" roles="manager-gui"/>

Replace password with your choice, then save and close the file

Here we declare four user roles, manager-gui, manager-script, manager-jmx and manager-status, which allow access to Manager and Host Manager pages, respectively. You also declare three users, admin, deployer and tomcat with respective roles.

To remove the restriction from Manager page, open its config file

sudo vi /opt/tomcat/webapps/manager/META-INF/context.xml

Comment out the Valve definition, as shown

...
<Context antiResourceLocking="false" privileged="true" >
  <CookieProcessor className="org.apache.tomcat.util.http.Rfc6265CookieProcessor"
                   sameSiteCookies="strict" />
<!--  <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve"
         allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" /> -->
  <Manager sessionAttributeValueClassNameFilter="java\.lang\.(?:Boolean|Integer|Long|Number|String)|org\.apache\.catalina\.filters\.Csr>
</Context>

Save and close the file, then repeat for Host Manager:

sudo vi /opt/tomcat/webapps/host-manager/META-INF/context.xml

You have now defined three users

Create a systemd file, We'll store the tomcat service in a file named tomcat.service, under /etc/systemd/system

sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service

Add the following lines

[Unit]
Description=Tomcat
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking

User=tomcat
Group=tomcat

Environment="JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/openjdk-11jdk"
Environment="JAVA_OPTS=-Djava.security.egd=file:///dev/urandom"
Environment="CATALINA_BASE=/opt/tomcat"
Environment="CATALINA_HOME=/opt/tomcat"
Environment="CATALINA_PID=/opt/tomcat/temp/tomcat.pid"
Environment="CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms512M -Xmx1024M -server -XX:+UseParallelGC"

ExecStart=/opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
ExecStop=/opt/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh

RestartSec=10
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user. Target

Rectify the value of JAVA_HOME, then save & close

Next, reload the system daemon to apply changes

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Start and enable the tomcat.service

sudo systemctl start tomcat
sudo systemctl enable tomcat

Check its status to confirm that it started successfully:

sudo systemctl status tomcat

Tomcat uses port 8080, so allow traffic to that port

sudo ufw allow 8080

Now you can access tomcat by navigating to the IP address of your server in the browser

http://your_server_ip:8080

Navigate to the Web Application Manager. Enter the credentials of the admin user that you added to the user’s list.

And you will have access to the page.

Download a sample.war that contains a sample application, using wget.

wget https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-10.1-doc/appdev/sample/sample.war

Then move the file to the /opt/tomcat/webapps directory.

sudo mv sample.war /opt/tomcat/webapps

Now go to https://public_ip:8080/sample to view the application