Prepare for Tomcat

The next big thing is to install my application server, aka Tomcat. But until then, we need some preparations.

First, install elinks. It's a text based browser, running in the console and really neat for testing local pages and downloading packages from the Internet. Again, simple :

yum install elinks

You already know to answer 'y' when prompted. Test the install with :

elinks http://www.sun .com

Type esc for menu and q to exit.

Now, the hard part : install Java, with some help from there. You begin by downloading the JDK kit from the Sun website.

Once there (with the browser from your regular Windows machine for simplicity, or with elinks from the linux console, if you prefer), accept the license agreement, then copy to the clipboard the URL corresponding to the jdk-1_5_0_11-linux-i586-rpm.bin file (right click on the link, copy shortcut). Of course, at the time of reading this, you will download the most recent JDK version.

Fire mc, and go to /opt. Press Ctrl-O to hide the panels.

Now, we do some wget-ing :

wget "the_url_you_copied" -O jdk-1_5_0_11-linux-i586-rpm.bin

Now you have a local copy of the compressed rpm in your /opt folder. You now type

sh jdk-1_5_0_11-linux-i586-rpm.bin

You read the eula with space, you answer yes to the question and you have the thing installed.
Go to /usr/java/jdk1.5.0_11 (you replace this with the jdk version number you installed) and type

./java -version

If by some accident the version returned is not the one you expected, it's probable to hava the "free" version of Java (GCJ) preinstalled. Remove-it :

rm /usr/bin/java

For some unknown reason (unknown for me, of course) the JAVA_HOME environment variable is not set, so go to /etc/profile, edit the thing and add the following lines :

JAVA_HOME="/usr/java/jdk1.5.0_11"
export JAVA_HOME

The environment variable will be set at the next reboot. If you can't wait until then, type

source /etc/profile