And so I have the displeasure of working with Java — a platform I once swear to avoid for the rest of my life — and I had to have my Ubuntu 12.10 environment set up. This is also verified to be similar in Ubuntu 12.04.

If you install tomcat7 from the official repository using “sudo apt-get install tomcat7″, the following paths and commands are probably helpful to you too.

Your WAR files

WAR files (.war) typically go into:

/var/lib/tomcat7/webapps

Your log files

Your log files should be here:

/var/lib/tomcat7/logs

It should be called “catalina.out”. It’s useful to check here for troubleshoot Apache Tomcat. It doesn’t mean that tomcat’s successful start would mean the application to be working. catalina.out has saved me on several occasions.

Your tomcat7 configuration files

Server settings goes here:

/etc/tomcat7/server.xml

You might find the other properties files useful as well:

/etc/tomcat7

Your tomcat7 and catalina startup shell files

You might need to edit some .sh files like in my case to change Catalina options. You can find the shell scripts here:

/usr/share/tomcat7/bin

You can read more on setting up Catalina environment options.

Other notes

If you know of other paths worth including, do post a comment. While this is documented more for personal use, I hope you can find it useful too!