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Getting three tomcat services running independently on our Windows 2003 has been problematic for quite some time. I’ve gone through the process several times and always ended up doing something wrong that forced me to start over.

I recently found this post that made it look entirely too simple. (and It was) Even though I tried “MB”‘s method and failed all hope was not lost.

The builddeploy article actually focused my attention on the pieces that played a part in my service and I just had to figure out the problems my specific environment introduced. As a warning I will let you know that hours of scripting work was wasted because I wasn’t running the windows command console as administrator. I got no errors, no logs, and no progress until I started the console as system administrator. The bad part was that things just looked like they ran correctly in the console and I only began getting meaningful errors when I went into godmode. Remember I am running on Windows Server 2003 in Native Mode, so YMMV.

Gotchas that kept me from moving quickly:

• You must run your command/powershell as administrator



• The service name (//IS//yourServiceName) must be alpha numeric… no symbols or spaces.



• The *w.exe file needs to be named the same as your service name. So in my case “Tomcat6twow.exe”. I got errors without doing so.

Below is my revised list of steps:

• Download and install Apache Tomcat as Windows Service. I used alternate path of c:\java\servers\ and assume that for the remainder of this doc.



• Check that the installation created windows service and you could stop and start Tomcat service



• Copy the content of Tomcat directory from “C:\java\servers\Tomcat6” into “C:\java\servers\Tomcat6-2”



• Modify shutdown port, HTTP and AJP connectors ports in “C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat6-2\conf\server.xml” of a new instance with different ports. I incremented them all by one.



• copy tomcat6.exe/tomcat6w.exe and rename the copies tomcat6two.exe/tomcat6twow.exe. At least for the *w.exe this is important to be able to set service params!! I leave the original tomcat6* exe files to avoid breaking something in tomcat’s core.



• Run the script below to install a new windows service for a new Tomcat instance. I broke the params into lines for readability, you need to make it one line. NOTE: On Server 2003 / 64bit you must run the command window as administrator for the script to be successful.

	tomcat6 //IS//Tomcat6two

	--DisplayName="Apache Tomcat 6 #2"

	--Install="C:\java\servers\Tomcat6-2\bin\tomcat6two.exe"

	--Jvm=auto

	--StartMode=jvm

	--StopMode=jvm

	--StartClass=org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap

	--StartParams=start

	--StopClass=org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap

	--StopParams=stop

Finishing up:

• run tomcat6twow.exe to set description, startup params, etc. I just mirrored the initial service setup with necessary path changes.



• Start this new “Apache Tomcat 6 #2” service from Windows Services



• Browse to the instance port hostname:port to see the tomcat start page.

If you hosed the service you installed and need to delete it, use the //DS// switch. You will have to restart the Windows server for the remove to be complete. (Another FAIL for MS Windows)

If you are struggling with the same thing I was then I hope this helps.

seeya, rich