SUNScholar/Prepare Ubuntu/S05

Step 5. Setup Tomcat Java Webapp Server

Please note:

1. This procedure does NOT require "mod_jk" or Apache2 port re-direction with firewall rules or the Apache2 server installation itself, in fact.
2. If you want to do URL rewrites as you did with Apache2, then try: http://tuckey.org/urlrewrite to do the same with Tomcat6.
3. This procedure has only been tested on an Ubuntu server installation!
4. This procedure is completely different from the official DSpace documentation.

Step 5.1: Install Tomcat

Type the following:

sudo apt-get install tomcat6

Step 5.2: Allow Tomcat to listen on ports "80" and "443"

Step 5.2.1: Setup "authbind" for Tomcat

To enable Tomcat to listen on a privileged port below 100, we need to enable "authbind". Edit the /etc/default/tomcat6 file as follows:

sudo nano /etc/default/tomcat6

Remove the hash sign from in front of the authbind parameter and change authbind to yes as follows

# If you run Tomcat on port numbers that are all higher than 1023, then you
# do not need authbind.  It is used for binding Tomcat to lower port numbers.
# NOTE: authbind works only with IPv4.  Do not enable it when using IPv6.
# (yes/no, default: no)
AUTHBIND=yes

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NANO Editor Help

CTL+O	= Save the file and then press Enter
CTL+X	= Exit "nano"
CTL+K	= Delete line
CTL+U	= Undelete line
CTL+W	= Search for %%string%%
CTL+\	= Search for %%string%% and replace with $$string$$
CTL+C	= Show line numbers

More info = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano_(text_editor)

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Now we need to tell "authbind" that Tomcat is allowed to use lower port numbers. Type the following commands:

sudo touch /etc/authbind/byport/80

sudo touch /etc/authbind/byport/443

sudo chmod 0755 /etc/authbind/byport/80

sudo chmod 0755 /etc/authbind/byport/443

sudo chown tomcat6.tomcat6 /etc/authbind/byport/80

sudo chown tomcat6.tomcat6 /etc/authbind/byport/443

cd /etc/authbind/byport

ls -l

Now Tomcat has permission to use ports 80 and 443. See below for an example listing of the files in the /etc/authbind/byport folder.

root@ir1:/etc/authbind/byport# ls -l
total 0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 tomcat6 tomcat6 0 2011-06-10 18:33 443
-rwxr-xr-x 1 tomcat6 tomcat6 0 2011-06-10 18:33 80

Step 5.2.2: Setup Tomcat for open port 80

Now we tell the Tomcat server to listen on the "authbind" ports. Edit the following file.

sudo nano /etc/tomcat6/server.xml

Find the connector for port 8080 and change it to port 80. Also add the UTF-8 encoding. See example below.

    <Connector port="80" protocol="HTTP/1.1" 
	       enableLookups="false"
               connectionTimeout="20000" 
               URIEncoding="UTF-8"
               redirectPort="443" />

If enabled, comment out the AJP 1.3 connector. It is not needed.

---

NANO Editor Help

CTL+O	= Save the file and then press Enter
CTL+X	= Exit "nano"
CTL+K	= Delete line
CTL+U	= Undelete line
CTL+W	= Search for %%string%%
CTL+\	= Search for %%string%% and replace with $$string$$
CTL+C	= Show line numbers

More info = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano_(text_editor)

---

Step 5.2.3: Setup Tomcat for secure port 443

Please go to: http://wiki.lib.sun.ac.za/index.php/SUNScholar/Secure_Internet_Connections later, after installation to do secure port 443 setup.

For now and testing it is ok, just to use port 80 only for Tomcat connections.

Step 5.3: Setup Tomcat admin users

Type as follows:

sudo nano /etc/tomcat6/tomcat-users.xml

Delete all the contents of the file and add the following admin and manager roles with a password.

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<tomcat-users>
  <role rolename="manager"/>
  <role rolename="admin"/>
  <user username="dspace" password="%%%%%%%" roles="admin,manager"/>
</tomcat-users>

---

NANO Editor Help

CTL+O	= Save the file and then press Enter
CTL+X	= Exit "nano"
CTL+K	= Delete line
CTL+U	= Undelete line
CTL+W	= Search for %%string%%
CTL+\	= Search for %%string%% and replace with $$string$$
CTL+C	= Show line numbers

More info = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano_(text_editor)

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Step 5.4: Restart the Tomcat server

Now restart the tomcat server as follows:

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat6 restart

Step 5.5: Post Tomcat installation checks

Now let's look if all went well:

sudo netstat -tapn | grep java

Tomcat should be listening on port 80 now:

root@server1:~# netstat -tapn | grep java
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:8005          0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      8063/java       
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:80              0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      8063/java       

Thats it, now you have a working Java webapp server.

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SUNScholar server load using the Tomcat "authbind" method.

All our tweaks and optimisations seem to be working. The load dropped when we started using "authbind" for Tomcat thereby eliminating the need for the Apache "mod_jk" module, which was creating extra processing overhead.	Looks like we have enough disk space in the /home partition for the next 3yrs at least, at our current rate of submissions. The /var partition which holds the database was reduced in size by tweaking the bitstream checker properties and then running a full database vacuum.
We have more than enough compute muscle.	Our memory usage stabilised when we stopped using the JSPUI. However after the upgrade to DSpace 1.8.2 and enabling discovery we are back to a memory intensive system.

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