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Apache Tomcat is the recommended servlet container to use with uPortal 3.2. While uPortal 3.2 requires a Servlet 2.5-compatible servlet container and another servlet container may be used, most uPortal implementers deploy to Apache Tomcat. Choosing Tomcat 6.x will likely allow uPortal adopters to get the best advice from the community.

Installing Apache Tomcat

Linux/Unix Installation

1. Download Apache Tomcat 6.x

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3.Rename your install to something more meaningful (optional):

No Format
mv apache-tomcat-6.0.26 uportal-tomcat

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5.Test your Tomcat installation

a. First, start tomcatTomcat

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TOMCAT$TOMCAT_HOME/bin/startup.sh

b. Go to http://localhost:8080/

You should see the Apache Tomcat Welcome screen

c. Shutdown tomcatTomcat

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TOMCAT_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh

Windows Installation

1. Download Apache Tomcat 6.x for Windows

2. Unzip the download into a suitable direcotydirectory. For example, you may unzip the file into the C:\ directory. This will create a directory like C:\apache-tomcat-6.x containing your Tomcat files.

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For Windows (different versions may vary) you can create these environment variables by doing the following: right-click 'My Computer' select properties and then the Advanced tab. Then click Environment Variables and under System variables click New. From here, you can enter the name and value for CATALINA_HOME and again for JAVA_HOME if it's not already created.

4. Start tomcatTomcat. Try starting up tomcat Tomcat by running the C:\apache-tomcat-6.x\bin\startup.bat batch file. Point your browser to http://localhost:8080 and you should see the default Tomcat home page (see above image). To shutdown the server run C:\apache-tomcat-6.x\bin\shutdown.bat batch file.

Further Tomcat Configurations

JVM settings

Examples of JVM settings
uPortal Heap Tuning

uPortal Specific Notes

Shared Libraries

uPortal places libraries in CATALINA_BASE/shared/lib The default Tomcat 6.0 download does not enable libraries to be loaded from this directory. To resolve this you must edit CATALINA_BASE/conf/catalina.properties and change the line that begins "shared.loader=" to the following:

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titleBGColor	#F0F0F0
borderStyle	dashed
title	Enabling shared libraries in CATALINA_BASE/conf/catalina.properties
borderStyle	dashed

shared.loader=${catalina.base}/shared/classes,${catalina.base}/shared/lib/*.jar

Shared Sessions

Jasig portlets, as well as many other popular JSR-168 portlets, rely on the ability to share user session data between the portal web application and portlet applications. To enable this feature in Tomcat, you must add the emptySessionPath="true" parameter to the in-use connector (configured in Tomcat 6 in CATALINA_BASE/conf/server.xml ).

Code Block

	xml
	xml
title	Example Tomcat Connector Configuration

<Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
    connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" emptySessionPath="true"/>

GZipping HTML

Browser-side performance may be improved somewhat by GZip-ping downloaded content where appropriate. uPortal 3.2 already GZips CSS and JavaScript. uPortal does not, however, GZip the uPortal page itself.

GZipping of HTML content can be performed via Tomcat. To enable this functionality, set compression="on" in the in-use tomcat Tomcat connector, and set the list of compressable mime types. More information about this feature can be found in the Tomcat configuration page.