Java Tutorial - Java Script :
Installing Tomcat under Windows
The installation of Tomcat under Windows is almost identical to what we covered earlier in this chapter. There are only a few differences.
NOTE While Tomcat will work on a Windows 98 system, it needs to be installed onto Windows NT, 2000, or XP to act as a service. Furthermore, Microsoft limits the ability of some of its operating systems to act as servers. If you want a fully scalable production capable server, you will need to use Windows NT Server or Windows 2000 server. Although Tomcat installs and runs as a service on Windows 2000 Professional and all editions of XP, these platforms have limited networking capabilities when compared to server products such as Windows 2000 Server.
Prior to installation, make sure you are logged in as an administrator. If you have previously installed Tomcat, you may want to uninstall it first. This is done by running the uninstall program that was installed into the Start menu
during the previous install. Start the installation by running the Tomcat executable; this time, however, you want to make sure that the NT service option is selected. Installing Tomcat as a service allows Tomcat to be started automatically by the operating system as the operating system is started. Complete the installation as before, remembering to change the installation directory to c:\jakarta\tomcat4 and enter an administrator password for Tomcat. If you want to run Tomcat on port 80 and you are not running IIS or Apache on port 80, then feel free to change the default port. We normally leave Tomcat running on port 8080 and then reconfigure it to the new port after we are certain everything else is working. The installation program installs Tomcat as a Windows service and then starts the server before it completes the installation. Tomcat will now automatically restart each time the system is rebooted. This behavior can be changed by going into the Windows Control Panel and selecting Services and then modifying the service for manual start instead of automatic start (see Figure 5.10). The Services Panel also allows you to provide Tomcat with startup options and set the user that Tomcat will run as. If Tomcat will be used for an Internet-facing site, for security reasons it is best to establish a local user login account with limited system abilities and run Tomcat as this user. You will want to make sure that Tomcat has all privileges for its installation directory and the directories below it, but limited access to the rest of the system. This way, if Tomcat is compromised, the potential damage will be minimized.
