Apache Tomcat with Nginx Proxy on Ubuntu 20.04

4 min readApr 18, 2022

Apache Tomcat is an open-source implementation of the Java Servlet and JSP technologies that can be used to deploy Java-based applications. It was created under the Apache-Jakarta subproject, but due to its popularity, it is now hosted as a separate Apache project. Tomcat also provides additional functionality that makes it easier to develop a complete web application solution. Tomcat is simple, easy-to-use, and one of the most widely used web servers in the world.

If you are looking to run Java-based applications that operate seamlessly and fast, then Apache Tomcat is the best choice for you.

Prerequisites

If you are using any cloud platform. We need an Ubuntu EC2 machine. Here i am using Ubuntu 20.04 in AWS cloud platform.
SSH connection to the EC2 instance.

1. Update System

Open terminal and run the following command to update your Ubuntu system.

sudo apt-get update -y

2. Install Java

Run the following command to install Java.

sudo apt-get install default-jdk -y

3. Install Tomcat

We first create a separate Linux user for tomcat server.

sudo useradd -m -U -d /opt/tomcat -s /bin/false tomcat

Then download Tomcat installation file. You can update the Tomcat version as per your requirement. Here is the list of all available versions.

sudo wget https://dlcdn.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-10/v10.0.20/bin/apache-tomcat-10.0.20.tar.gz

Extract the downloaded file.

sudo tar -xvzf apache-tomcat-10.0.20.tar.gz

Move the extracted file to /opt with following command.

sudo mv apache-tomcat-10.0.20 /opt/tomcat/tomcat

Set proper permission & file ownership.

sudo chown -R tomcat:tomcat /opt/tomcat/tomcat
sudo chmod -R 755 /opt/tomcat/tomcat

4. Configure Tomcat Service

Create systemd file for Apache Tomcat with the following command.

sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service

Add the following lines to this file.

[Unit]
Description=Tomcat 10.0.20 servlet container
After=network.target[Service]
Type=forkingUser=tomcat
Group=tomcatEnvironment="JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/default-java"
Environment="JAVA_OPTS=-Djava.security.egd=file:///dev/urandom"Environment="CATALINA_BASE=/opt/tomcat/tomcat"
Environment="CATALINA_HOME=/opt/tomcat/tomcat"
Environment="CATALINA_PID=/opt/tomcat/tomcat/temp/tomcat.pid"
Environment="CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms512M -Xmx1024M -server -XX:+UseParallelGC"ExecStart=/opt/tomcat/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
ExecStop=/opt/tomcat/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save and close the file. Run the following command to reload system daemon.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Start Tomact service and enable it to run at system reboot.

sudo systemctl start tomcat
sudo systemctl enable tomcat

5. Configure Tomcat Web Interface

Tomcat Web Interface is the admin panel that allows you to manage your server. You will need to create a user to be able to log into its dashboard.

You can define it using tomcat-users.xml file.

sudo vi /opt/tomcat/tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml

And it looks like

Find the following section and modify the following lines. Update admin and password in bold below as per your requirement.

<!--
  <user username="admin" password="<must-be-changed>" roles="manager-gui"/>
  <user username="robot" password="<must-be-changed>" roles="manager-script"/>
-->

Save and close the file.

By default, this web interface is accessible only from localhost. We need to make it accessible from outside.

Open following file in a text editor.

sudo vi /opt/tomcat/tomcat/webapps/manager/META-INF/context.xml

Remove the following line.

<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve" allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" />

Save and close the file. Similarly, open the following file for Host Manager App and remove the above line.

sudo vi /opt/tomcat/tomcat/webapps/host-manager/META-INF/context.xml

Save and close the file.

Restart Apache Tomcat server.

sudo systemctl restart tomcat

6. Install & Configure NGINX

Run the following command to install NGINX.

sudo apt-get install nginx -y

Create a separate virtual host configuration file.

sudo vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/tomcat.conf

Add the following lines. Replace tomcat.example.com with the URL or IP of your website/application.

server {
  listen          80;
  server_name     tomcat.example.com;
  root            /opt/tomcat/tomcat/webapps/;location / {
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_pass http://sanjai.example.com:8080/;
  }
}

In the above code, we create a NGINX server that runs on port 80. We use proxy_pass directive to pass all incoming requests to port 8080 used by Apache Tomcat. This way our NGINX & Tomcat servers communicate with each other.

Test NGINX server configuration for errors.

sudo nginx -t

If you don’t get any errors, restart NGINX server with the following commands.

sudo systemctl restart nginx

7. Test Apache Tomcat Web UI

Open browser and visit http://sanjai.example.com. You will see the following screen.

Click on Manager App or Host Manager at the top right corner of your screen. You will see a login prompt for username & password. After successful sign on, you will be taken to the respective app’s home page.

We have completed the configuration of Apache Tomcat with Nginx Proxy on Ubuntu 20.04