Tomcat and Window98


Running Tomcat on a Windows 98 Platform


NB. The batch files found in %TOMCAT_HOME%\bin have been written and tested under Windows NT. Some modifications may be necessary for operation on a Windows 98 platform.

Earlier in the tutorial you would have probably seen this message appear several times and muttered an "Oh no" to yourself. However the modifications that are to be made are indeed quite simple and in no time you can have Tomcat up and running on your Window 98 platform.


Modification Overview

As mentioned earlier, some modification of the files that were distributed with the Tomcat application has to be done. Before we go any further there is a requirement that must be satisfied first for any modifications to be done. This is:


There are several files that are located in the %TOMCAT_HOME%\bin directory that have been saved with a UNIX file format. These are primarily the files we need to start and stop the Tomcat server and are as follow:-

The other file which must change its format is the build.bat file which is found in the root directory of our application (webapps/application). NB This file is used to build our web application.

This UNIX format needs to be changed for the Windows 9x platform and without making this change if we try to run the files we get a Bad Command or Filename error being displayed.


Modification Process

TextPad

To modify these files using TextPad, open each respective file in the TextPad editor. Select File from the Menu bar and choose Save As. A pop-up window is displayed with the name of the file shown in a textbox labeled File name. This is to remain unaltered, however the only change we will make is to the File Format option. Select PC from the List box instead of UNIX. Click the Save button to save this change...and that is it. We are finished modifying the file format. Repeat the procedure for each file.

File Conversion Tool

Use the respective conversion tool of your choice to change the files listed above from having a File Format value of UNIX to PC.


Modification Review

That is all that is required to get your batch scripts working on a Windows 9x platform. Once these changes have been made you can build your web application and then start and stop your Tomcat server when testing the application.

There is one other important concern when running the Tomcat application on the Windows 98 platform. This concern is that of Environment Space. If enough environment space has not been specified when running the batch scripts you may get an error stating "Not enough environment space" or something similar.

To solve this problem we must enlarge the environment space to enlarge the environment space we must set the following command in the CONFIG.SYS file. The CONFIG.SYS is found in your C directory (C:\). (This file is usually hidden so one must change the view properties in order to see it, or simply use the command window to edit the file)

   SHELL=C:\Windows\COMMAND.COM /P /E:4096

COMMAND.COM is found in the Windows installation directory (usually C:\windows).

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