Installing Tomcat 7 as Service on Windows Server 2008

Question

I want to install my tomcat v7.0.12 as a service on my Windows 2008 Server. On the tomcat page I found this tutorial. But there isn\'t a service.bat file in my inst

Answer 1

You can find the solution here!

Install the service named 'Tomcat7'

C:\>Tomcat\bin\service.bat install

There is a 2nd optional parameter that lets you specify the name of the service, as displayed in Windows services.

Install the service named 'MyTomcatService'

C:\>Tomcat\bin\service.bat install MyTomcatService

Answer 2

I have spent a couple of hours looking for the magic configuration to get Tomcat 7 running as a service on Windows Server 2008... no luck.

I do have a solution though.

My install of Tomcat 7 works just fine if I just jump into a console window and run...

C:\apache-tomcat-7.0.26\bin\start.bat

At this point another console window pops up and tails the logs (tail meaning show the server logs as they happen).

SOLUTION

Run the start.bat file as a Scheduled Task.

1. Start Menu > Accessories > System Tools > Task Scheduler

2. In the Actions Window: Create Basic Task...

3. Name the task something like "Start Tomcat 7" or something that makes sense a year from now.

4. Click Next >

5. Trigger should be set to "When the computer starts"

6. Click Next >

7. Action should be set to "Start a program"

8. Click Next >

9. Program/script: should be set to the location of the startup.bat file.

10. Click Next >

11. Click Finish

12. IF YOUR SERVER IS NOT BEING USED: Reboot your server to test this functionality

Answer 3

There are a lot of answers here, but many overlook a few points. I ran into the same issue and it was likely due to a combination of being a complete neophyte when it comes to tomcat. Even more I am rather new to web servers in general. I consider myself somewhat proficient user of windows, but I guess not proficient enough. In particular I don't work with services too much.

I did not have a startup.bat or any bat files. I only downloaded the 32-bit/64-bit Windows Service Installer. The bin that is created for that download is small - only 4 files. My colleagues were surprised that I did not have a catalina.bat etc... and I was too. Only the below four files in the bin. And no %CATALINA_HOME% or %TOMCAT_HOME% etc...

bootstrap.jar
tomcat-juli.jar
Tomcat7.exe
Tomcat7w.exe

With this setup I had some frustrations as setting parameters is done via the gui widget - very helpful I might add.

So nearly all the answers I have perused were not immediately applicable as many said, "go to bin and issue the startup.bat file" I am a neophyte but not so much to not be able to look into the bin and start such a file it is existed!

For my simple purposes (again remember that I am a neophyte at tomcat and even web servers) all I wanted to do was to be able to startup and shutdown the tomcat server from a cmd prompt window. Nothing too heavy duty. I am embarrassed to say how simple it is. It is probably evident to anyone with a shred of experience with services and such.

To Start server: <Tomcat Root>/bin>Tomcat7.exe start
To Stop server: <Tomcat Root>/bin>Tomcat7.exe stop

Found here - http://crunchify.com/how-to-start-stop-apache-tomcat-server-via-command-line-setup-as-windows-service/

I did not realize there was a separate download the 64-bit Windows zip file that has a tomcat server and all the standard array of cmd line tomcat management tools. This zip file has all the common startup/shutdown scripts, batch files for windows, including catalina.bat/.sh etc... Then all the above answers make sense and are rather trivial.

Remember I am a neophyte when it comes to tomcat and web servers. It appears these two downloads are somewhat mutually exclusive in the sense that if I download and install the 32-bit/64-bit Windows Service Installer version and the 64-bit Windows zip file the startup.bat file in the 64-bit Windows zip file version will not run or interact with the 32-bit/64-bit Windows Service Installer tomcat instance. But I am not sure about this point.

Answer 4

I had a similar problem, there isn't a service.bat in the zip version of tomcat that I downloaded ages ago.

I simply downloaded a new 64-bit Windows zip version of tomcat from http://tomcat.apache.org/download-70.cgi and replaced my existing tomcat\bin folder with the one I just downloaded (Remember to keep a backup first!).

Start command prompt > navigate to the tomcat\bin directory > issue the command:

service.bat install

Hope that helps!

Answer 5

I just had the same issue and could only install tomcat7 as a serivce using the "32-bit/64-bit Windows Service Installer" version of tomcat:

http://tomcat.apache.org/download-70.cgi

Answer 6

Looks like now they have the bat in the zip as well

note that you can use windows sc command to do more

e.g.

sc config tomcat7 start= auto

yes the space before auto is NEEDED