How to setup Tomcat to run as user and daemon in Lunix/Redhat ?

dreamality · 12-20-2009, 04:08 PM

I have the following:
* A redhat box running Fedora release 7 (Moonshine)
* Tomcat apache-tomcat-6.0.18 distribution

Currently, Apache is setup to work with Tomcat using the AJP connector, that works fine.

When I boot the box I su root and then I run the script startup.sh which is on the bin directory of tomcat, that starts tomcat without a problem. I can close my root session, my ssh and tomcat keeps running.

The problem is that running as root is a huge security problem. I run multiple virtual hosts in tomcat and although all sites are developed by me, I want to prevent any webapp from causing any harm such as:

* System.exit() which will shutdown Tomcat
* writing to secure directories
* practically control the box!

I need to be able to run tomcat as user not as root and also as a daemon on start up so that I don't need to manually start it.

Any help on the subject will be much appreciated!

kbp · 12-21-2009, 07:55 PM

Here's one I sanitized earlier, it's pretty basic:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
# description: tomcat init script

RETVAL=0
prog1="tomcat"


start() {
        echo -n $"Starting $prog1: "
        su - tomcat -c "cd /app/tomcat5; ./bin/tcctl.sh start 1"
        RETVAL=$?
        echo
        return $RETVAL
}

stop() {
        echo -n $"Stopping $prog1: "
        su - tomcat -c "cd /app/tomcat5; ./bin/tcctl.sh stop 1"
        RETVAL=$?
        echo
        return $RETVAL
}


case "$1" in
  start)
        start
        ;;
  stop)
        stop
        ;;
  *)
        echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop}"
        RETVAL=1
esac

... you get the idea

cheers