manual tomcat install versus apt

[Thufir]

On Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:04:37 +0100, Thierry Carrez wrote:

> Thufir wrote:
>> On Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:59:32 -0500, John DeCarlo wrote:
>> 
>>> On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 1:49 AM, Thufir <hawat.thufir at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>  why don't the apt-get commands at:
>>>> https://help.ubuntu.com/8.10/serverguide/C/tomcat.html script the
>>>> install process which the howtogeek site lays out?  Is there a
>>>> security concern which the help.ubuntu.com directions are trying to
>>>> address?
>>>>
>>> I ran into this issue years ago.  I could never get a useful answer
>>> and gave up.  Besides, you get access to a newer version if you
>>> install by hand.
> 
> If the howto you refer to is [1] then it was written even before the
> Tomcat 6 packages were added to Ubuntu. It details how to download a
> Tomcat binary from the Apache website and manually deploy it under
> Ubuntu.
> 
> [1] http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/linux/installing-tomcat-6-on-ubuntu/
>
> The instructions in the server guide [2] are about installing the
> tomcat6 package from the Ubuntu repositories. You then benefit from the
> bugfixes and updates that we provide to our repositories contents. It's
> also so much simpler to just run "sudo apt-get install tomcat6".
> 
> [2] https://help.ubuntu.com/8.10/serverguide/C/tomcat.html

Exactly, which is why myself and others are asking why apt-get installs 
tomcat in a way which differs from a manual install.

> The security concern would be that if your manual install is affected by
> a vulnerability (which is the case for the 6.0.14 recommended in your
> howto) you have to learn about it and update the software manually. By
> using the official Ubuntu packages you get the security fixes in the
> regular update process.

What I'm asking about is why apt installs tomcat in a way which differs 
from manually installing it.  Is there some security concern prompting 
the non-standard install?

The specific functionality I require is inputting CATALINA_HOME and so 
forth into Netbeans for the Tomcat plug-in, which only works from the 
manual install.  Why?  Dunno, because to troubleshoot Tomcat step #1 is 
to manually install Tomcat.

Why not replicate a manual install and have apt-get just do a standard 
manual install?  There must be some rationale for the customization.  I'm 
not alone in not having found a useful answer, others have also given up 
and just manually installed Tomcat.


-Thufir