Awesomeful

1. Install Sun JDK This is quite straight forward if you follow the instructions at the unofficial fedora Faq, steps 1 through 11, located at http://www.fedorafaq.org/#java
2. Compile and Install Tomcat 5 This is based on the instructions provided by the Apache foundation located here.
   1. Download the tarball: I downloaded the Core version 5.5.16 from here.
   2. Copy the tarball to /opt: I used /opt to install it, but you can choose any other directory. /opt makes a lot of sense though!
   3. Untar it with the command gunzip -c apache-tomcat-5.5.16.tar.gz |tar -xf -

The folder created is what Apache calls "CATALINA_HOME", so in this case it is/opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.16 1. Type the following commands to build it:

$ cd /opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.16/bin/ $ tar xvfs jsvc.tar.gz/r cd jsvc-src/ $ chmod +x * $ ./configure --with-java=/usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.5.0-sun/ $ make/r cp jsvc ..

1. Smile

Now you can start it by running startup.sh from the /bin directory (relative to CATALINA_HOME), stop it with shutdown.sh, dump your application into webapps, etc, etc, etc.

By the way, you can have your entire system using your fresh installation of the JDK by using "alternatives"

su -
alternatives --config java

 There are 2 programs which provide 'java'.

 Selection    Command
-----------------------------------------------
 1           /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.4.2-gcj/bin/java
 *+ 2           /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.5.0-sun/bin/java

 Enter to keep the current selection[+], or type selection number:

At this point, type 2, then enter.

You can make it start on boot by doing this.