Deploying a Tomcat Application Using Podman on a cPanel Server

This guide is created to help you with deploying a Tomcat application on a cPanel server using Podman. It’s that easy for someone who’s never touched either Podman or cPanel to follow and deploy his own application. So, let’s begin!

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.