Tomcat 5.0 Start/Restart
Problem Statement : This document describes features and
drawbacks of various options of Starting/Restarting Tomcat Webserver.
We can Start/Restart the Tomcat Web server
in the following two ways.
1) Through the services.msc,
2) Through the startup.bat.
Through the services.msc :-
Features :-
1) It’s a GUI interface. So, performing Tomcat Start/Stop/Restart
operations are very easy.
2) This process is going on background. So, it won’t open another window.
3) Tomcat Service progress information
automatically redirects to logs directory’s stdout.log file. So, at any time, we can review the service
status.
Note:- Tomcat overrides stdout.log file on Service Start-up. If you want previous
information, then you need to take backup.
This file also gives clear information on Tomcat Startup failures.
4) We need not worry in case of Windows’ user
logoff/restart the system. It means,
this process works with any user and starts automatically as a windows
background service while windows Start/Restart.
Drawbacks :-
5) But, only one problem with this feature,
i.e., services.msc is also an application. It starts from C:\WINNT\system32
directory. So, by default, this
application is pointing to this directory.
So, we need to place application dependent files (like properties files)
into this directory.
6) We should specify the path environment
variables for JAVA_HOME and CATALINA_HOME.
Through the startup.bat :-
Drawbacks :-
1) This is command-line application. There are different batch files for
Start/Shutdown the Tomcat Web Server. To
Restart the Tomcat Web Server, we have to do Shutdown and Start.
2) This process opens a new console
window. This window is very
sensitive. We should not close it. If we close this window, Tomcat gets shutdown
automatically. And also, we should not
click on this window. If you left-click
on this window, Tomcat stops the service temporarily. Then, all applications that are working on
this web server gets hang. Then,
applications won’t work.
3) This window displays progress information
about Tomcat Service. But, this
information scrolls out of the screen after some time. We can’t get it back and not possible to take
backup.
4) We should take care in case of Windows’
user logoff/restart the system. In this
case, Windows closes this window automatically.
We need to restart the tomcat again.
Features :-
5) This batch file runs from
<TOMCAT_HOME>/BIN directory. We
need to place application dependent files (like properties files) into this
directory.
6) The only one main advantage is, this start-up
batch file sets JAVA_HOME and CATALINA_HOME path settings automatically for
that instant.
