A better approach to install Liferay on Tomcat using Ubuntus provided package

A better approach to install Liferay on Tomcat using Ubuntus provided package

When you install Tomcat using apt-get on Ubuntu, its root folder will be in /var/lib/tomcat7

Inside of it, there will be some folders and symbolic links

work -> ../../cache/tomcat7
logs -> ../../log/tomcat7
conf -> /etc/tomcat7
shared
server
common
temp
webapps

Folders bin and lib will be in /usr/share/tomcat7

Following the install process described in Installing Liferay on Tomcat 7 you will see, in the first sentence:

Liferay Home is one folder above Tomcat�s install location.

If you start Liferay without changing anything, just like the tutorial says, Liferay will create its folders in the Liferay Home, which is, by default, /var/lib/.

Having application data folders inside /var/lib is not a good idea, just like Dave Kliczbor commented on the comments section on that page.

In order to "fix" that behaviour, create the file /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes/portal-ext.properties and add the line

liferay.home=/var/lib/tomcat7

Create the folders /var/lib/tomcat7/data and /var/lib/tomcat7/deploy and make them writeable for the user tomcat7 running

sudo chown -R tomcat7:tomcat7 /var/lib/tomcat7/data
sudo chown -R tomcat7:tomcat7 /var/lib/tomcat7/deploy

Thats enough to have your Liferay server ready to run.