Introduction

When you have an application that needs to be deployed on a cPanel server, you will have to perform several configurations and setups. While there are many container management tools available, Podman makes it easy to use containers without the need for a daemon. This guide will demonstrate how you can use Podman to deploy a Tomcat application on a cPanel server so that everything is set up to work effortlessly for your clients.

Step-by-Step Deployment Guide

Step 1: Install Tomcat Using Podman

First, open the Terminal from cPanel to create a new Tomcat application by running the following command:

/scripts/ea-podman install ea-tomcat101

This command will create a folder named similar to ea-tomcat101.cpanelusername.02 in the ea-podman.d directory.

Step 2: Upload Your WAR File

Navigate to the folder /home/cpanelusername/ea-podman.d/ea-tomcat101.cpanelusername.02 and upload your .war file into the webapps directory. Ensure that your .war file is named ROOT.war.

Step 3: Configure Tomcat

Next, go to the directory /home/cpanelusername/ea-podman.d/ea-tomcat101.cpanelusername.02/conf and edit the server.xml file. Locate the following line at line 123:

<Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="false" autoDeploy="false" deployOnStartup="false" deployXML="false">

Replace false with true in this line, so it reads:

<Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true" deployOnStartup="true" deployXML="true">

Save the file and exit the editor.

Step 4: Restart the Tomcat Service

Restart the Tomcat service to apply the changes by running the following command:

/scripts/ea-podman restart ea-tomcat101.cpanelusername.02

Upon restarting, your .war file will be deployed in the webapps folder, and a directory named ROOT will be created.

Step 5: Edit Apache Configuration

Log in to SSH as the root user and edit the Apache configuration file located at /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf. Search for the domain dhanrishtacredit.com and uncomment the following lines in the virtual host entries for ports 81 and 444:

Include "/etc/apache2/conf.d/userdata/std/2_4/cpanelusername/dhanrishtacredit.com.cpanelusername.com/*.conf"

Include "/etc/apache2/conf.d/userdata/ssl/2_4/cpanelusername/dhanrishtacredit.com.cpanelusername.com/*.conf"

Save the file after making these changes.

Step 6: Create Required Directories

Create the following directories as the root user:

mkdir -p /etc/apache2/conf.d/userdata/std/2_4/cpanelusername/dhanrishtacredit.com.cpanelusername.com

mkdir -p /etc/apache2/conf.d/userdata/ssl/2_4/cpanelusername/dhanrishtacredit.com.cpanelusername.com

Step 7: Create Proxy Configuration

In both newly created directories, create a file named proxy.conf and add the following code:

<IfModule proxy_ajp_module>

 ProxyPass "/" "ajp://127.0.0.1:10009/"

</IfModule>

You can determine the port by running the following command:

podman ps

Step 8: Restart Apache

Finally, restart the Apache server to apply the changes.

systemctl restart httpd

That’s it! Your Tomcat application should now be accessible.