How to Install Tomcat 8.5 on CentOS 7
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•6 min read

This tutorial shows you how to install Tomcat 8.5 on CentOS 7. Tomcat is an open-source implementation of Java Servlet, JavaServer Pages, Java Expression Language, and Java WebSocket technologies.
Prerequisites
Before starting with this tutorial, make sure you are logged into your server with a user account with sudo privileges or with the root user. It is best practice to run administrative commands as sudo user instead of root. If you don’t have a sudo user on your system, create one by following these instructions .
Install OpenJDK
Tomcat 8.5 requires Java SE 7 or later. In this tutorial we will install OpenJDK 8 , the open-source implementation of the Java Platform which is the default Java development and runtime in CentOS 7.
The installation is simple and straight forward:
sudo yum install java-1.8.0-openjdk-devel
Create Tomcat system user
Running Tomcat as a root user is a security risk and is not recommended. Instead, we will create a new system user
and group with home directory /opt/tomcat
that will run the Tomcat service:
sudo useradd -m -U -d /opt/tomcat -s /bin/false tomcat
Download Tomcat
We will download the latest version of Tomcat 8.5.x from the Tomcat downloads page . At the time of writing, the latest version is 8.5.37. Before continuing with the next step you should check the download page for any new version.
Change to the /tmp
directory and use wget
to download the zip file:
cd /tmp
wget http://www-us.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-8/v8.5.37/bin/apache-tomcat-8.5.37.zip
Once the download is completed, extract the zip file
and move
it to the /opt/tomcat
directory:
unzip apache-tomcat-*.zip
sudo mkdir -p /opt/tomcat
sudo mv apache-tomcat-8.5.37 /opt/tomcat/
Tomcat 8.5 is updated frequently. To have more control over versions and updates, we will create a symbolic link latest
which will point to the Tomcat installation directory:
sudo ln -s /opt/tomcat/apache-tomcat-8.5.37 /opt/tomcat/latest
The tomcat user that we previously set up needs to have access to the tomcat directory. Change the directory ownership to user and group tomcat:
sudo chown -R tomcat: /opt/tomcat
Make the scripts inside bin
directory executable by issuing the following chmod
command:
sudo sh -c 'chmod +x /opt/tomcat/latest/bin/*.sh'
Create a systemd unit file
To run Tomcat as a service create a tomcat.service
unit file in the /etc/systemd/system/
directory with the following contents:
[Unit]
Description=Tomcat 8.5 servlet container
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=forking
User=tomcat
Group=tomcat
Environment="JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jre"
Environment="JAVA_OPTS=-Djava.security.egd=file:///dev/urandom"
Environment="CATALINA_BASE=/opt/tomcat/latest"
Environment="CATALINA_HOME=/opt/tomcat/latest"
Environment="CATALINA_PID=/opt/tomcat/latest/temp/tomcat.pid"
Environment="CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms512M -Xmx1024M -server -XX:+UseParallelGC"
ExecStart=/opt/tomcat/latest/bin/startup.sh
ExecStop=/opt/tomcat/latest/bin/shutdown.sh
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Notify systemd that we created a new unit file and start the Tomcat service by executing:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start tomcat
Check the service status with the following command:
sudo systemctl status tomcat
tomcat.service - Tomcat 8.5 servlet container
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Sat 2018-03-31 16:30:48 UTC; 3s ago
Process: 23826 ExecStart=/opt/tomcat/latest/bin/startup.sh (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 23833 (java)
CGroup: /system.slice/tomcat.service
└─23833 /usr/lib/jvm/jre/bin/java -Djava.util.logging.config.file=/opt/tomcat/latest/conf/logging.properties -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager -Djava.security.egd=fi...
If there are no errors you can enable the Tomcat service to be automatically started at boot time:
sudo systemctl enable tomcat
Adjust the Firewall
If your server is protected by a firewall
and you want to access the tomcat interface from the outside of the local network, open port 8080
.
Use the following commands to open the necessary port:
sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port=8080/tcp
sudo firewall-cmd --reload
8080
only to your internal network.Configure Tomcat Web Management Interface
At this point Tomcat is installed and we can access it with a web browser on port 8080
, but we can not access the web management interface because we have not created a user yet.
Tomcat users and their roles are defined in the tomcat-users.xml
file.
If you open the file you will notice that it is filled with comments and examples describing how to configure the file.
sudo nano /opt/tomcat/latest/conf/tomcat-users.xml
To add a new user who will be able to access the tomcat web interface (manager-gui and admin-gui) we need to define the user in tomcat-users.xml
file as shown below. Make sure you change the username and password to something more secure:
<tomcat-users>
<!--
Comments
-->
<role rolename="admin-gui"/>
<role rolename="manager-gui"/>
<user username="admin" password="admin_password" roles="admin-gui,manager-gui"/>
</tomcat-users>
By default Tomcat web management interface is configured to allow access only from the localhost. If you want to be able to access the web interface from a remote IP or from anywhere which is not recommended because it is a security risk you can open the following files and make the following changes.
If you need to access the web interface from anywhere open the following files and comment or remove the lines highlighted in yellow:
<Context antiResourceLocking="false" privileged="true" >
<!--
<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve"
allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" />
-->
</Context>
<Context antiResourceLocking="false" privileged="true" >
<!--
<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve"
allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" />
-->
</Context>
If you need to access the web interface only from a specific IP, instead of commenting the blocks add your public IP to the list.
Let’s say your public IP is 41.41.41.41
and you want to allow access only from that IP:
<Context antiResourceLocking="false" privileged="true" >
<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve"
allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1|41.41.41.41" />
</Context>
<Context antiResourceLocking="false" privileged="true" >
<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve"
allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1|41.41.41.41" />
</Context>
The list of allowed IP addresses is a list separated with vertical bar |
. You can add single IP addresses or use a regular expressions.
Restart the Tomcat service for changes to take effect:
sudo systemctl restart tomcat
Test the Installation
Open your browser and type: http://<your_domain_or_IP_address>:8080
Upon successful installation, a screen similar to the following will appear:

Tomcat web application manager dashboard is available at http://<your_domain_or_IP_address>:8080/manager/html
. From here, you can deploy, undeploy, start, stop and reload your applications.

Tomcat virtual host manager dashboard is available at http://<your_domain_or_IP_address>:8080/host-manager/html
. From here, you can create, delete and manage Tomcat virtual hosts.

Conclusion
You have successfully installed Tomcat 8.5 on your CentOS 7 system and learned how to access the Tomcat management interface. You can now visit the official Apache Tomcat 8 Documentation and learn more about the Apache Tomcat features.
If you hit a problem or have feedback, leave a comment below.