Installing Tomcat 5

First I got the tarball

wget http://apache.mirrors.hoobly.com/tomcat/tomcat-5/v5.5.12/bin/apache-tomcat-5.5.12.tar.gz
wget http://www.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-5/v5.5.12/bin/apache-tomcat-5.5.12.tar.gz.asc
wget http://www.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-5/KEYS
gpg --import KEYS
gpg --verify apache-tomcat-5.5.12.tar.gz.asc apache-tomcat-5.5.12.tar.gz

This is what the verification block looks like

gpg: Signature made Fri 23 Sep 2005 07:05:42 AM PDT using DSA key ID 7C037D42
gpg: Good signature from "Yoav Shapira "
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg:          There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
Primary key fingerprint: 07E4 8665 A34D CAFA E522  E5E6 2661 91C3 7C03 7D42

Next I set my environment variables for Java

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/share/jdk1.5.0_06/
export CATALINA_HOME=/usr/share/apache-tomcat-5.5.12/

Next I unbundled the tomcate tarball and startup the service

cd /usr/share
sudo tar xvzf /home/ericp/Software/apache-tomcat-5.5.12.tar.gz
sudo chown -R http:http $CATALINA_HOME
add this to top of the $CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh file "export JAVA_HOME=/usr/share/jdk1.5.0_06/"
sudo -u http $CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh

lastly verify http://localhost:8080 is up and running

Don't forget to add a new user to $CATALINA_HOME/conf/tomcat-users.xml. You need to add a user with the "manager" role.