Chapter 17. Tomcat Startup

This chapter focuses on Tomcat startup using two classes in the org.apache.catalina.startup package, Catalina and Bootstrap. The Catalina class is used to start and stop a Server object as well as parse the Tomcat configuration file, server.xml. The Bootstrap class is the entry point that creates an instance of Catalina and calls its process method. In theory, these two classes could have been merged. However, to support more than one mode of running Tomcat, a number of bootstrap classes are provided. For example, the aforementioned Bootstrap class is used for running Tomcat as a stand-alone application. Another class, org.apache.catalina.startup.BootstrapService, is used to run Tomcat as a Windows NT service.

For user’s convenience, Tomcat also comes with the batch files and shell scripts to start and stop the servlet container easily. With the help of these batch files and shell scripts, the user does not need to remember the options for the java.exe program to run the Bootstrap class. Instead, he/she can just run the appropriate batch file or shell script.