Set up Tomcat7 on a Linux virtual machine with Azure

Important

Classic VMs will be retired on March 1, 2023.

If you use IaaS resources from ASM, please complete your migration by March 1, 2023. We encourage you to make the switch sooner to take advantage of the many feature enhancements in Azure Resource Manager.

For more information, see Migrate your IaaS resources to Azure Resource Manager by March 1, 2023.

Apache Tomcat (or simply Tomcat, also formerly called Jakarta Tomcat) is an open source web server and servlet container developed by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). Tomcat implements the Java Servlet and the JavaServer Pages (JSP) specifications from Sun Microsystems. Tomcat provides a pure Java HTTP web server environment in which to run Java code. In the simplest configuration, Tomcat runs in a single operating system process. This process runs a Java virtual machine (JVM). Every HTTP request from a browser to Tomcat is processed as a separate thread in the Tomcat process.

Note

Azure has two different deployment models for creating and working with resources: Azure Resource Manager and classic. This article covers how to use the classic deployment model. We recommend that most new deployments use the Resource Manager model. To use a Resource Manager template to deploy an Ubuntu VM with Open JDK and Tomcat, see this article.

Starting November 15, 2017, virtual machines will be available only in the Azure portal.

In this article, you will install Tomcat7 on a Linux image and deploy it in Azure.

You will learn:

  • How to create a virtual machine in Azure.
  • How to prepare the virtual machine for Tomcat7.
  • How to install Tomcat7.

It is assumed that you already have an Azure subscription. If not, you can sign up for a free trial at the Azure website. If you have an MSDN subscription, see Microsoft Azure Special Pricing: MSDN, MPN, and BizSpark Benefits. To learn more about Azure, see What is Azure?.

This article assumes that you have a basic working knowledge of Tomcat and Linux.

Phase 1: Create an image

In this phase, you will create a virtual machine by using a Linux image in Azure.

Step 1: Generate an SSH authentication key

SSH is an important tool for system administrators. However, configuring access security based on a human-determined password is not recommended. Malicious users can break into your system based on a username and a weak password.

The good news is that there is a way to leave remote access open and not worry about passwords. This method consists of authentication with asymmetric cryptography. The user’s private key is the one that grants the authentication. You can even lock the user’s account to not allow password authentication.

Another advantage of this method is that you do not need different passwords to sign in to different servers. You can authenticate by using the personal private key on all servers, which prevents you from having to remember several passwords.

Follow these steps to generate the SSH authentication key.

  1. Download and install PuTTYgen from the following location: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
  2. Run Puttygen.exe.
  3. Click Generate to generate the keys. In the process, you can increase randomness by moving the mouse over the blank area in the window.
    PuTTY Key Generator screenshot that shows the generate new key button
  4. After the generate process, Puttygen.exe will show your new public key.
    PuTTY Key Generator screenshot that shows the new public key and the save private key button
  5. Select and copy the public key, and save it in a file named publicKey.pem. Don’t click Save public key, because the saved public key’s file format is different from the public key we want.
  6. Click Save private key, and save it in a file named privateKey.ppk.

Step 2: Create the image in the Azure portal

  1. In the portal, click Create a resource in the task bar to create an image. Then, choose the Linux image that is based on your needs. The following example uses the Ubuntu 14.04 image. Screenshot of the portal that shows the New button

  2. For Host Name, specify the name for the URL that you and Internet clients will use to access this virtual machine. Define the last part of the DNS name, for example, tomcatdemo. Azure will then generate the URL as tomcatdemo.cloudapp.net.

  3. For SSH Authentication Key, copy the key value from the publicKey.pem file, which contains the public key generated by PuTTYgen.
    SSH Authentication Key box in the portal

  4. Configure other settings as needed, and then click Create.

Phase 2: Prepare your virtual machine for Tomcat7

In this phase, you will configure an endpoint for Tomcat traffic, and then connect to your new virtual machine.

Step 1: Open the HTTP port to allow web access

Endpoints in Azure consist of a TCP or UDP protocol, along with a public and private port. The private port is the port that the service is listening to on the virtual machine. The public port is the port that the Azure cloud service listens to externally for incoming, Internet-based traffic.

TCP port 8080 is the default port number that Tomcat uses to listen. If this port is opened with an Azure endpoint, you and other Internet clients can access Tomcat pages.

  1. In the portal, click Browse > Virtual machines, and then click the virtual machine that you created.
    Screenshot of the Virtual machines directory

  2. To add an endpoint to your virtual machine, click the Endpoints box. Screenshot that shows the Endpoints box

  3. Click Add.

    1. For the endpoint, enter a name for the endpoint in Endpoint, and then enter 80 in Public Port.

      If you set it to 80, you don’t need to include the port number in the URL that is used to access Tomcat. For example, http://tomcatdemo.cloudapp.net.

      If you set it to another value, such as 81, you need to add the port number to the URL to access Tomcat. For example, http://tomcatdemo.cloudapp.net:81/.

    2. Enter 8080 in Private Port. By default, Tomcat listens on TCP port 8080. If you changed the default listen port of Tomcat, you should update Private Port to be the same as the Tomcat listen port.
      Screenshot of UI that shows Add command, Public Port, and Private Port

  4. Click OK to add the endpoint to your virtual machine.

Step 2: Connect to the image you created

You can choose any SSH tool to connect to your virtual machine. In this example, we use PuTTY.

  1. Get the DNS name of your virtual machine from the portal.

    1. Click Browse > Virtual machines.
    2. Select the name of your virtual machine, and then click Properties.
    3. In the Properties tile, look in the Domain Name box to get the DNS name.
  2. Get the port number for SSH connections from the SSH box.
    Screenshot that shows the SSH connection port number

  3. Download PuTTY.

  4. After downloading, click the executable file Putty.exe. In PuTTY configuration, configure the basic options with the host name and port number that is obtained from the properties of your virtual machine.
    Screenshot that shows the PuTTY configuration host name and port options

  5. In the left pane, click Connection > SSH > Auth, and then click Browse to specify the location of the privateKey.ppk file. The privateKey.ppk file contains the private key that is generated by PuTTYgen earlier in the "Phase 1: Create an image" section of this article.
    Screenshot that shows the Connection directory hierarchy and Browse button

  6. Click Open. You might be alerted by a message box. If you have configured the DNS name and port number correctly, click Yes. Screenshot that shows the notification

  7. You are prompted to enter your username.
    Screenshot that shows where to enter username

  8. Enter the username that you used to create the virtual machine in the "Phase 1: Create an image" section earlier in this article. You will see something like the following:
    Screenshot that shows the authentication confirmation

Phase 3: Install software

In this phase, you install the Java runtime environment, Tomcat7, and other Tomcat7 components.

Java runtime environment

Tomcat is written in Java. See Azure supported JDKs for information on how to get fully supported Java runtimes. You can also bring your own, but the rest of this article will use the Azure-supported releases.

Install Azure supported JDK

Follow the apt-get install instructions documented on the Azul Zulu Enterprise for Azure website.

Confirm that Java installation is successful

You can use a command like the following to test if the Java runtime environment is installed correctly:
java -version

You should see a message like the following:

Successful OpenJDK installation message

Install Tomcat7

Use the following command to install Tomcat7.

sudo apt-get install tomcat7  

If you are not using Tomcat7, use the appropriate variation of this command.

Confirm that Tomcat7 installation is successful

To check if Tomcat7 is successfully installed, browse to your Tomcat server’s DNS name. In this article, the example URL is http://tomcatexample.cloudapp.net/. If you see a message like the following, Tomcat7 is installed correctly. Successful Tomcat7 installation message

Install other Tomcat7 components

There are other optional Tomcat components that you can install.

Use the sudo apt-cache search tomcat7 command to see all of the available components. Use the following commands to install some useful components.

sudo apt-get install tomcat7-admin      #admin web applications

sudo apt-get install tomcat7-user         #tools to create user instances  

Phase 4: Configure Tomcat7

In this phase, you administer Tomcat.

Start and stop Tomcat7

The Tomcat7 server automatically starts when you install it. You can also start it with the following command:

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat7 start

To stop Tomcat7:

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat7 stop

To view the status of Tomcat7:

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat7 status

To restart Tomcat services:

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat7 restart

Tomcat7 administration

You can edit the Tomcat user configuration file to set up your admin credentials. Use the following command:

sudo vi  /etc/tomcat7/tomcat-users.xml   

Here is an example:
Screenshot that shows the sudo vi command output

Note

Create a strong password for the admin username.

After editing this file, you should restart Tomcat7 services with the following command to ensure that the changes take effect:

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat7 restart  

Open your browser, and enter http:///manager/html as the URL. For the example in this article, the URL is http://tomcatexample.cloudapp.net/manager/html.

After connecting, you should see something similar to the following:
Screenshot of the Tomcat Web Application Manager

Common issues

Can't access the virtual machine with Tomcat and Moodle from the Internet

Symptom

Tomcat is running but you can’t see the Tomcat default page with your browser.

Possible root cause

  • The Tomcat listen port is not the same as the private port of your virtual machine's endpoint for Tomcat traffic.

    Check your public port and private port endpoint settings and make sure the private port is the same as the Tomcat listen port. See "Phase 1: Create an image" section of this article for instructions on configuring endpoints for your virtual machine.

    To determine the Tomcat listen port, open /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf (Red Hat release), or /etc/tomcat7/server.xml (Debian release). By default, the Tomcat listen port is 8080. Here is an example:

    <Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"  connectionTimeout="20000"   URIEncoding="UTF-8"            redirectPort="8443" />  
    

    If you are using a virtual machine like Debian or Ubuntu and you want to change the default port of Tomcat Listen (for example 8081), you should also open the port for the operating system. First, open the profile:

    sudo vi /etc/default/tomcat7  
    

    Then uncomment the last line and change “no” to “yes”.

    AUTHBIND=yes
    
  1. The firewall has disabled the listen port of Tomcat.

    You can only see the Tomcat default page from the local host. The problem is most likely that the port, which is listened to by Tomcat, is blocked by the firewall. You can use the w3m tool to browse the webpage. The following commands install w3m and browse to the Tomcat default page:

    sudo yum install w3m w3m-img

    w3m https://localhost:8080

Solution

  • If the Tomcat listen port is not the same as the private port of the endpoint for traffic to the virtual machine, you need change the private port to be the same as the Tomcat listen port.
  1. If the issue is caused by firewall/iptables, add the following lines to /etc/sysconfig/iptables. The second line is only needed for https traffic:

    -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

    -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT

    Important

    Make sure the previous lines are positioned above any lines that would globally restrict access, such as the following: -A INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited

To reload the iptables, run the following command:

service iptables restart

This has been tested on CentOS 6.3.

Permission denied when you upload project files to /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/

Symptom

When you use an SFTP client (such as FileZilla) to connect to your virtual machine and navigate to /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/ to publish your site, you get an error message similar to the following:

 status:    Listing directory /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps
 Command:    put "C:\Users\liang\Desktop\info.jsp" "info.jsp"
 Error:    /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/info.jsp: open for write: permission denied
 Error:    File transfer failed

Possible root cause

You have no permissions to access the /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps folder.

Solution

You need to get permission from the root account. You can change the ownership of that folder from root to the username you used when you provisioned the machine. Here is an example with the azureuser account name:

 sudo chown azureuser -R /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps

Use the -R option to apply the permissions for all files inside of a directory too.

This command also works for directories. The -R option changes the permissions for all files and directories inside the directory. Here is an example:

 sudo chown -R username:group directory  

This command changes ownership (both user and group) for all files and directories that are inside the directory.

The following command only changes the permission of the folder directory. The files and folders inside the directory are not changed.

 sudo chown username:group directory