The way I do this is by using a CATALINA_HOME/CATALINA_BASE structure.

The tomcat distribution is the CATALINA_HOME directory.

You create another directory structure that becomes CATALINA_BASE.

In this directory structure, you would create:

temp
work
conf
conf/<EngineName>/<HostName>
logs
webapps
        
I also use a shared/lib directory to hold jar files that I want shared across 
all of my contexts. In 6.0.20 I had to add this to the catalina.properties file.

Now, Copy the CATALINA_HOME/conf files to CATALINA_BASE/conf and modify them as 
desired.

Before you invoke the startup script, you export the variables so the startup 
script sees them.

On my system it's something like:

CATALINA_HOME=/usr/local/apache-tomcat-6.0.20
CATALINA_BASE=/srv/tomcat

Now, upgrading to a new version is somewhat simpler because you only have to 
change the version # for CATALINA_HOME

If you're using log4j, it gets a little sticky because you have to put some 
property files in the common/classes directory and put log4j.jar in common/lib 
(at least in 5.5.27). I think you might be able to get around this by doing 
some edit to the common loader entry in catalina.properties, but I haven't had 
a chance to test it.

At any rate, I like this approach because you don't have to worry about finding 
and disabling all sample installations, admin apps, etc. If you have to revert 
to a previous version after making some changes, you don't have to worry about 
finding the edits and migrating them back to a previous version.

This is also a good solution if you want to have multiple tomcats on one 
machine. You have one CATALINA_HOME directory and as many CATALINA_BASE 
directories as you need.


George Sexton
MH Software, Inc.
http://www.mhsoftware.com/
Voice: 303 438 9585
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Christopher Schultz [mailto:ch...@christopherschultz.net]
> Sent: Monday, August 24, 2009 9:58 AM
> To: Tomcat Users List
> Subject: Re: upgrade from 6.0.10 to 6.0.20 and retain conf and webapps.
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> lowercase g,
> 
> On 8/24/2009 10:59 AM, g f wrote:
> > I searched the tc website and google and havent had much luck finding
> info
> > on minor upgrades...most posts pertain to major (5.5 to 6.0 etc.)
> > I was wondering if it was possible to just overwrite the bin and the
> lib
> > directory in order to accomplish this upgrade?
> 
> Tomcat doesn't really support "upgrades" per-se... you have to do a new
> install. How much configuration and webapps are we talking about?
> 
> Tomcat comes with only a few webapps configured out-of-the box. You
> should be able to do the following with little trouble:
> 
> 1. Install Tomcat 6.0.20
> 2. Delete everything in (new) webapps
> 3. Copy (or move) everything from your old webapps to the new webapps
> 4. Examine the differences between old server.xml and new server.xml
> 5. MERGE the changes between the server.xml files
> 6. Repeat #4/#5 with conf/context.xml and conf/web.xml if you
>    have customized them at all
> 7. Repeat #6 with the lib/ directory's libraries. Make sure anything
>    you put in there gets copied to the new install.
> 
> I highly recommend doing a MERGE rather than a simple replacement just
> in case something has changed. These files are generally not that long
> and involved (unless you added a ton of stuff to them, but the marge
> will still not be too bad), so I think it's worth it.
> 
> Good luck,
> - -chris
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