Remove the existing Java RPM from the system, if there is one installed. RedHat has shipped with GJC, an open-source implementation of Java which unfortunately is not fully compatible with SoftSlate Commerce.

								
[root@server root]#rpm -qa | grep java
jdk-1.6.0-fcs
[root@server root]#rpm -e jdk-1.6.0-fcs
							

Download the Sun JDK, version 5 or 6 from http://java.sun.com/j2se/downloads.html. Download the rpm file, which is actually a .bin file. After downloading, you must make it executable and then execute it so you can accept the license agreement. Once you do that it'll extract the .rpm file. Then install the rpm. It should install the JDK into /usr/java.

								
[root@server root]#chmod +x jdk-6-linux-amd64-rpm.bin
[root@server root]#./jdk-6-linux-amd64-rpm.bin
[root@server root]#rpm -i jdk-6-linux-i586.rpm
							

Download Apache Tomcat from http://tomcat.apache.org. Extract it into /usr/local. For convenience, create a symbolic link to it named /usr/local/tomcat.

								
[root@server local]#tar -zxf apache-tomcat-5.5.25.tar.gz
[root@server local]#ln -s apache-tomcat-5.5.25 tomcat
							

Create a user and a group on the machine named "tomcat" with no privileges, and change the ownership of certain directories under the Tomcat installation, to the new user and group.

[root@server local]#/usr/sbin/useradd tomcat
[root@server local]#/usr/sbin/groupadd tomcat
[root@server local]#chown -R tomcat.tomcat conf logs work temp
							

By default Tomcat will initialize all the applications in its webapps directory. On a production installation, this is probably not desireable. To work around this, create an empty directory which we will identify as the webapps directory.

								
[root@server local]#mkdir /usr/local/tomcat/empty
[root@server local]#chown -R tomcat.tomcat /usr/local/tomcat/empty
							

Open /usr/local/tomcat/conf/server.xml and add the host configuration for the application, within the <Engine> tag. In this example, we are placing SoftSlate Commerce in the web root of the Apache HTTP server:

<Host name="mydomain.com" appBase="/usr/local/tomcat/empty" unpackWARs="true"
autoDeploy="true" deployOnStartup="true" xmlValidation="false"
xmlNamespaceAware="false">
<Alias>www.mydomain.com</Alias>
<Context path="" reloadable="true" docBase="/var/www/html" />
</Host> 
							

Also in server.xml, change the <Engine> tag's defaultHost attribute to "mydomain.com" (or whatever your domain name is).

Install a start/stop script for Tomcat in RedHat's /etc/init.d directory. An example of this script is available here: Tomcat Start/Stop script. To install the script, simply copy it to /etc/init.d and make it executable. Open it to make sure the configurations at the top of the file are correct for your server. To install it into RedHat's initialization system so that Tomcat starts up automatically whenever the server reboots, run these commands:

[root@server root]#cd /etc/init.d
[root@server init.d]#/sbin/chkconfig --add tomcat
[root@server init.d]#/sbin/chkconfig tomcat on 
							

On production systems, it is likely you'll want to run Tomcat under a larger memory (heap) size than the default of 64 Megs. In addition, we must specify the location of the Sun JDK for Tomcat to use it as it starts up. Finally, for the start/stop script to work, we must set an environment variable pointing to a file containing Tomcat's process ID. For these configurations, create a file named setenv.sh and place it inside /usr/local/tomcat/bin. For a server where you want to specify a heap size of 512 Megs, use the following for the contents of setenv.sh:

									
export CATALINA_PID=/usr/local/tomcat/bin/startstop.pid
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/default
export JAVA_OPTS="-Xms64M -Xmx512M" 
								

Test Tomcat at this point by running the start/stop script.

									
[root@server root]#/etc/init.d/tomcat start
								

Check the Tomcat log file at /usr/local/tomcat/logs/catalina.out for any errors or issues. Note, we have not installed SoftSlate Commerce in /var/www/html yet, so you should see an error complaining about that.

Once downloaded, extract and compile the mod_jk.so connector from the source code. There are binaries available from Apache but in our experience they have proved incompatible in many cases. Once compiled, copy the mod_jk.so library file to /etc/httpd/modules.

									
[root@server root]#tar -zxf tomcat-connectors-1.2.25-src.tar.gz
[root@server root]#cd tomcat-connectors-1.2.25-src/native
[root@server root]#./configure --with-apxs=/usr/sbin/apxs
[root@server root]#cp apache-2.0/mod_jk.so /etc/httpd/modules/
								

Now, configure Apache HTTP server to load the JK Connector and hand off requests to the JK Connector based on certain URL patterns. Create a file at /etc/http/conf.d/tomcat.conf, and use the following for its contents:

									
# Tomcat Connector configuration
LoadModule jk_module modules/mod_jk.so
JkWorkersFile /etc/httpd/conf.d/workers.properties
JkLogFile /var/log/httpd/jk_module.log
JkLogLevel info
JkMount /*.do worker1
JkMount /*.jsp worker1
JkMount /product/* worker1
JkMount /category/* worker1
JkMount /welcome worker1
JkMount /page/* worker1
JkMount /do/* worker1
JkMount /manager/* worker1
JkMount /manufacturer* worker1
JkMount /content/* worker1
JkMount /productlist worker1
									
# Add index.jsp to DirectoryIndex files
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.htm index.shtml index.php4 index.php3 index.phtml index.cgi index.jsp
									
# Prevent access to the WEB-INF directory!
<Directory /var/www/html/WEB-INF/>
  AllowOverride None
  Deny from all
</Directory>

								

You'll notice the above configuration refers to another configuration file at /etc/httpd/conf.d/workers.properties, where the JK Connector's "workers" are defined. Create this file and use the following for its contents to define a worker:

									
# Define 1 real worker using ajp13
# We could define more workers for say, virtual domains. worker.list=worker1, worker2
worker.list=worker1

# Set properties for the workers (ajp13)

# type: Type of worker  
worker.worker1.type=ajp13

# host: Host where is the tomcat worker is listening for ajp13 requests
worker.worker1.host=localhost

# port: Port where the tomcat worker is listening for ajp13 requests
worker.worker1.port=8009

								

Now test to make sure the Apache configuration is correct and that it can successfully start up with the JK Connector configuration:

									
[root@server root]#/etc/init.d/httpd configtest
Syntax OK
[root@server root]#/etc/init.d/httpd graceful