Time for action – configuring Tomcat as a service on Ubuntu

On Windows we configured Tomcat as a system service, that is, a program running at boot without any user action. Are you wondering why on Ubuntu you have to manually start Tomcat? You don't. Indeed, the operating system can be configured for automatic start of services. In this section, you will create a script and learn how it works.

1. Open your preferred editor and enter the following lines. Be sure to launch the editor with sudo as we are going to create a file in a system folder.

   #!/bin/sh
   ### BEGIN INIT INFO
   # Provides:          tomcat
   # Required-Start:    $local_fs $remote_fs $network $syslog
   # Required-Stop:     $local_fs $remote_fs $network $syslog
   # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
   # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
   # Short-Description: Start/Stop Tomcat  v7.0.27
   ### END INIT INFO
   #
   #  /etc/init.d/tomcat
   #
   export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jre1.6.0_37
   export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH
   export CATALINA_HOME=/opt/apache-tomcat-7.0.27
   export JAVA_OPTS...