windows 2008R2 / Tomcat driving me insane :)

[Jeroen Eynikel]

Hi,

hoping someone has some experience with this. I am trying to install tm1 9.5.1 x64 on a windows 2008 R2 server.

The problem I have is that I haven't even gotten to the TM1 part as I need Tomcat (using contributor) and I can't get that to work.

IBM documentation on it is non-existant and tbh documentation on tomcat in general is pretty bad as well imo.

I.e. I understand from the little documentation IBM offers on the subject that I should either install both the 64bit java runtime with 64 bit Tomcat or 32 bit jruntime with 32 bit Tomcat.

As far as I can deduce from IBM's information there seems to be no preference at all between any of these choices. I would actually expect that in real life 64 bit is probably the better choice of the two. Or does it really not make a difference at all?

Regardless of which option is the best - I would be gratefull for any opinions on the subject - what interests me the most is actually getting one of the versions to work as so far I have tried installing both 'combinations' without any success.

The furthest I have gotten so far is getting the tomcat service installed but when trying to start it up it shuts down after 10-15 seconds with error '1067' without any further clarification. There is nothing in the tomcat log directory either.

Anyone have any experience with this? If so I would be most gratefull, starting with exactly which Java Runtime version and tomcat version you used.

So far I have tried tomcat 6.0.26 x86 (which was the version used on the 32 bit server and which worked without issue there) and 6.0.35 x64


A very frustrated Jeroen

[Jeroen Eynikel]

Just some more information to explain why I am going insane here

First off I am working with a French version of Windows 2008 R2.

In this version apparently they have some sort of alias on the program files folder.

I.e. if you look at windows explorer you will see

C:\Programmes
C:\Program Files (X86)

When looking at the top bar in windows explorer however C:\Programmes changes into C:\Program Files and in dos it only knows C:\Program Files.

So I figured I would put the x64 version in the programmes / program files folder. When doing that however service install aborts as it claiming the catalina_home env variable is unknown. (Although i set it up as C:\Program Files\Apache... (also tried with the mysterious C:\Programmes))

Then I just cut the apache folder and moved it to the program files (x86) directory. Adapted the catalina_home variable accordingly. Tried the service_install again and behold... all of a sudden the things installs, no more complaints about not being able to find the catalina_home variable.

It doesn't actually *work* though as when actually trying to start the service it still shuts down with this error 1067.

[jim wood]

Tomcat is a third party product so IBM will never provide much. The problem is the Tomcat website doesn't give you much either. The best thing to do (and this may sound strange) is look at other product web sites like oracle. They are much more in to the open source scene and carry better Tomcat installation documentation.

With windows 2008 as long as you install nothing in the program files directory you'll be fine.

As for tomcat itself, if memory serves you need a jdk (not jre) installed on the system and an environmental variable pointing to the bin directory within the jdk directory. If you have this in place you should be fine.

[Jeroen Eynikel]

I will try whether the jdk makes any difference.

Just noticed that when you put the environment variable on a path C:\program files\ and then do an echo in dos it will reply with C:\Program Files (x86) which explains the problem from my previous post. Don't know yet whether this would be solved after a reboot or whether win2008 R2 assumes any variable pointing to Program Files must really be pointing to Program Files (x86) as you would obviously have to be quite insane to try to install anything in the program files folder...

[jim wood]

As I said with 2008 avoid installing anything in the Program Files directory. If you do this, your last point will be mute.

[PlanningDev]

I have installed Tomcat 64 bit on Windows Server 2008 R2 a few times. Most of the time, the standard install as stated works, IE 64 bit versions of Java and Tomcat or 32 bit but not a mix and match.

I don't believe you need a JDK, the standard JRE should work fine.

Do you happen to have JAVA_HOME set in your environment variables and if so, which version of JAVA is it pointed to? We have run into this issue before where other installs have set JAVA_HOME to a different JRE.

If JAVA_HOME is required for other applications then you may have to hack the catalina.bat file and force the environment variables there. If you install as a windows service then you won't get the bat files, only the Tomcat7.exe. If this is the case then you should be able to right click the icon in the system tray and configure the JRE location from there.

Ive done this with both Tomcat 6 and 7 as well has the same JRE's you listed.

Not sure about the alias issue with the French version of 2008 R2 though.

[Jeroen Eynikel]

The environment variables were all set as they should be.

However I *think* I have it working now

the combination that finally seems to have done the trick for me was jdk6u21-windows-64.exe with Tomcat 6.0.33 self extractor and avoiding program files like the plague - don't know if that is actually required though).

I have been unable to get 6.0.35 (normal or se) to work at all so far and this morning I just decided to give up on that one and try an older version.

Since I also tried the steps on this page yesterday (to no avail)

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id ... FL-yZqBkHI

which included downloading and moving a seperate .dll I will now remove everything again and see whether I can get it to work in a more or less clean install.

If so I'll post the exact steps I did on here.

[Jeroen Eynikel]

Ok for those interested.

I used JRE-6u31-windows-x64 and Apache-Tomcat-6.0.33 on a clean install but this time on an english version.

Installed the jre (run as admin) to C:\java\jre6
then ran the tomcat.exe as admin and installed to Tomcat 6.0

did not even have to set any of the environment variables and it seems to be working....

So I don't know whether all of yesterdays misery was due to Tomcat 6.0.35 or because I was using a french windows version but this seems to work fine at least.