This section examines the directory structure and files found in the Tomcat Servlet Container installation and how they relate to the TDS.

Exploring The Tomcat Directory Structure

Examine the Tomcat directory structure, a.k.a. ${tomcat_home}. Move into ${tomcat_home} and do a long listing (/usr/local in this example):

# cd /usr/local/tomcat
# ls -l

total 144
drwxr-x--- 2 root root  4096 Oct 24 13:29 bin
-rw-r----- 1 root root 19539 Sep  4 16:30 BUILDING.txt
drwx------ 2 root root  4096 Sep  4 16:30 conf
-rw-r----- 1 root root  6090 Sep  4 16:30 CONTRIBUTING.md
drwxr-x--- 2 root root  4096 Oct 24 13:29 lib
-rw-r----- 1 root root 57092 Sep  4 16:30 LICENSE
drwxr-x--- 2 root root  4096 Sep  4 16:28 logs
-rw-r----- 1 root root  1726 Sep  4 16:30 NOTICE
-rw-r----- 1 root root  3255 Sep  4 16:30 README.md
-rw-r----- 1 root root  7142 Sep  4 16:30 RELEASE-NOTES
-rw-r----- 1 root root 16262 Sep  4 16:30 RUNNING.txt
drwxr-x--- 2 root root  4096 Oct 24 13:29 temp
drwxr-x--- 7 root root  4096 Sep  4 16:29 webapps
drwxr-x--- 2 root root  4096 Sep  4 16:28 work

Familiarize yourself with these important directories:

bin/

  • Contains startup.sh, shutdown.sh and other scripts/programs.
  • The *.sh files (for Unix and Mac OS systems) are functional duplicates of the *.bat files (for Windows systems).

conf/

  • Server-wide Tomcat configuration.
  • You will modify server.xml and tomcat-users.xml to adjust logging, authentication and access control, enable TLS/SSL, etc.
  • Web applications can override some server-wide settings in their own configuration file (e.g., the web deployment descriptor).

webapps/

  • Contains web applications directories and WAR files.
  • This is where we will be putting the TDS web application.
  • You will also be using the manager application that comes with the Tomcat Servlet Container during this tutorial.

logs/

  • Tomcat log files are here by default.
  • This is one of the directories you will be looking for log files (the TDS logs elsewhere by default).
  • The log files should be your first stop for troubleshooting Tomcat and TDS issues. (Hint, hint).
  • Logs files may contain useful information for assessing the security of your system.
  • Make a point of becoming familiar with the Tomcat-generated catalina.out, catalina.yyyy-mm-dd.log, and localhost_access_log.yyyy-mm-dd.log files.

Next Step

Next, we’ll look at starting/stopping the Tomcat Servlet Container as well as configuring the JVM for the TDS.