suggestions for tomcat

[Donald Ball <ba...@webslingerZ.com>]

hey. i just went about installing tomcat-3.2.1 + apache-1.3.19 on a server
for the first time - until now i've been relying on jserv and catalina in
standalone mode. here are a few suggestions to make life easier for tomcat
users:

1. the binary linux mod_jk.so on the web site doesn't work with blackdown
jvm-1.3 and apache-1.3.19. you might document which jvm and apache version
it is known to work with (along with whatever other variables are relevant
- glibc maybe). you might also provide some precompiled dso's for other
common jvm/apache combinations.

2. or you might just include the mod_jk source along with the binary
distribution.

3. you might document explicitly in large bold letters that jakarta should
not be run as root unless it's listening on a privileged port.

4. you might also document which directories and/or files in the tomcat
distribution tree should be writable and/or owned by the user tomcat runs
as and which should _not_ be writable by the tomcat user. i bet most
people just chown -R tomcat.tomcat the distribution tree, but that's not a
good strategy. you might also provide a script to chown the files
properly.

just my thoughts as a first-time installer. oh, and as far as catalina
goes, i would have like to have helped beta test mod_webapp, but i
couldn't find any documentation on how to configure it in apache.

- donald