Why Tomcat?
Tomcat is the servlet container that VIVO has grown up with, so is most commonly used with VIVO, but it's by no means the only servlet container people are using.
Tomcat tools
Probe
http://code.google.com/p/psi-probe/
Nick from Eindhoven reports
I'm pretty impressed with probe, it's much easier to browse logs, see memory usage and get tips on tweaking the config. Real helpful for a java noob.
Tomcat temp directory and image uploading
problem
I'm getting an error when I try to upload an image to an individual. It
seems I'm missing the directory where the resize is done by java? Can
anyone tell me which directory the thumbnailair is supposed to run so I
can check if it exists/has the right permissions?
suggested approach
The ImageIO.write() method may write to a cache directory. Since the cache
directory path is not explicitly set in the code, it should use "the
system-dependent default temporary-file directory". This directory path is
stored in the Java system property "java.io.tmpdir"
This system property has a default value: on Unix systems, it is usually
"/tmp" or "/var/tmp", depending on the JVM you are using.
However, this value can be overridden when the JVM starts up, by setting
an option like "-Djava.io.tmpdir=/mytmp". Tomcat does this in catalina.sh,
setting the environment variable CATALINA_TMPDIR to "$CATALINA_BASE"/temp,
which is usually the [tomcat]/temp directory, and since Tomcat generally
runs under the userID that has write-access to that directory, things are
usually good.
If you are running Tomcat under a userID that can't write to
[tomcat]/temp, can you change that? If not, can you override
CATALINA_TMPDIR when you start tomcat, so it points to a different
directory? You can do this on the command line, or by setting it in
[tomcat]/bin/setenv.sh
