How To Install Tomcat In OS X

Tomcat Installation

Download the latest binary distribution of tomcat, in my case apache-tomcat-8.0.37.tar.gz, from apache

Extract the file from the tar archive and move the tomcat folder to /opt:

cd Downloads/
tar -xvf apache-tomcat-8.0.36.tar.gz 
mv apache-tomcat-8.0.36 /opt

Set CATALINA_HOME and PATH Environment Variables

$ nano ~/.bash_profile

(~/.bash_profile)

# Set Catalina Home
export CATALINA_HOME=/opt/apache-tomcat-8.0.36
# Export Catalina/bin to path
export PATH=$PATH:$CATALINA_HOME/bin

Common Tomcat Commands

To start tomcat, open a shell Terminal window in any directory and issue the command:

$ startup.sh

Test Tomcat installation by pointing your browser to: http://localhost:8080

To stop tomcat, type on the shell:

$ shutdown.sh

To read the log file:

cd /opt/apache-tomcat-8.0.36/logs
tail -f catalina.out

Manager Web Application

The Manager App is an application that comes with Tomcat and allows you to start, stop, reload and undeploy web applications installed in Tomcat

To allow the access to the Manager App add a manager user to the tomcat users configuration file.

Edit the tomcat-users.xml file:

$ nano /opt/apache-tomcat-8.0.36/conf/tomcat-users.xml

add the following two lines:

<tomcat-users>
...
<role rolename="manager-gui"/>
<user username="manager" password="password" roles="manager-gui"/>
</tomcat-users>