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War-file Installation for Servlet Containers

How to install GeoServer into servlet containers such as Tomcat, Jetty, and Jboss.

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Following are some instructions on how to deploy Geoserver in Tomcat. These were tested on Debian etch using Tomcat 5.5. Depending on your platform and Tomcat setup these will vary.

Tomcat setup

The easiest method to deploy GeoServer is to use the administration or manager webapps. First a user(s) with the role "admin" (for administration webapp) or "manager" (for manager webapp) must be defined in
$CATALINA_HOME/conf/tomcat-users.xml

Enabling administration from a remote host

To enable remote administration you will also need to edit $CATALINA_HOME/conf/Catalina/localhost/admin.xml and manager.xml and add a request filter for the hostname or TCP/IP address of your administrative host.

Configuring the Tomcat security manager.

See the Security Manager HOW-TO. I needed to add the following entries to $CATALINA_HOME/conf/catalina.policy (note that if you are using the Debian Tomcat packages you will need to edit /etc/tomcat5.5/policy.d/04webapps.policy as catalina.policy is automatically built from the files in policy.d at Tomcat startup)

// The permissions granted to Geoserver
grant codebase "file:/var/lib/tomcat5.5/webapps/geoserver/-" {
        permission java.io.FilePermission "/var/lib/tomcat5.5/webapps/geoserver/data/-", "read,write,delete";
        permission java.util.PropertyPermission "*", "read,write";
        permission java.util.logging.LoggingPermission  "control";
        permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "getClassLoader";
        permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "preferences";
        permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "shutdownHooks";
        permission java.lang.reflect.ReflectPermission "suppressAccessChecks";
};

Deploying GeoServer

The meaning of "$CATALINA_HOME" is not explained. It looks like the name of a shell environment variable, but I don't know what defines it and what it should point to.

Posted by sewilco at Aug 29, 2007 14:12

In the manager (http://localhost:8180/ on Debian) the variable is explained:
$CATALINA_HOME/webapps/ROOT/index.jsp
where "$CATALINA_HOME" is the root of the Tomcat installation directory.

You can find the installation directory with
dpkg -L tomcat5.5
which reveals this path (on Debian):
/var/lib/tomcat5.5/

Posted by mawe at Nov 28, 2007 08:22

There were some more permissions to set (see above) to run the examples:
//permission java.io.FilePermission "/var/lib/tomcat5.5/webapps/geoserver/data/sf/-", "read";
//permission java.io.FilePermission "/var/lib/tomcat5.5/temp/-", "read,write,delete";
// the above does not work, but relative paths seem to work
// add permission to read, write, delete for the data directory:
permission java.io.FilePermission "data/-", "read,write,delete";
// the following does not seem to be necessary:
//permission java.net.SocketPermission "127.0.0.1:8180", "connect";
//permission java.net.SocketPermission "127.0.0.1:8180", "resolve";

Errors were in the logfile (/var/log/tomcat5.5/catalina_.log):
Source could not be instantiated: java.security.AccessControlException: access denied (java.io.FilePermission /var/lib/tomcat5.5/temp/Geotools read)
4420SEVEREorg.vfny.geoserver.global.Data - FeatureTypeInfo sfRoads:::roads ignored - as DataStore sfRoads is broken:java.security.AccessControlException: access denied (java.io.FilePermission data/sf/roads.shp read)

Posted by mawe at Nov 28, 2007 10:37

Under construction for 8 months. Should give birth soon.

Posted by sewilco at Nov 29, 2007 15:03