Setting Up Liferay Portal War on Tomcat 7

This article documents how to set up Liferay Portal using a war on Tomcat 7.

Resolution

1. Gather the Necessary Files

Download and unzip the most recent supported version of Tomcat 7.
Download the most recent Liferay WAR, source code, and dependencies.

2. Dependency Jars

Create a folder called ext in {$TOMCAT_HOME}/lib/ext.
Extract the dependencies files to {$TOMCAT_HOME}/lib/ext.
Copy the following jars from {$build}/lib/development to $TOMCAT_HOME/lib/ext:
- activation.jar
- jms.jar
- jta.jar
- jutf7.jar
- mail.jar
- persistence.jar
Copy the ccpp.jar from {$build}/lib/portal to {$TOMCAT_HOME}/lib/ext.
Copy the followings jars from {$build}/lib/development to {$TOMCAT_HOME}/lib/ext:
- resin.jar
- script-10.jar
Download the latest MySQL JDBC driver from the MySQL Connectors page and extract mysql-connector-java-{$version}-bin.jar to {$TOMCAT_HOME}/lib/ext.

3. Configure the Domain

Create the file setenv.bat in $TOMCAT_HOME}/bin.

Edit the setenv.bat file and add the following:

if exist "%CATALINA_HOME%/jre@java.version@/win" (
   if not "%JAVA_HOME%" == "" (
   set JAVA_HOME=
   )
   set "JRE_HOME=%CATALINA_HOME%/jre@java.version@/win"
)

set "JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% -Dfile.encoding=UTF8 -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -Dorg.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.ENABLE_CLEAR_REFERENCES=false -Duser.timezone=GMT -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m"

Navigate to the folder {$TOMCAT_HOME}/conf/Catalina/ and create a folder called localhost. If those folders do not exist, then create them.
Create the file ROOT.xml in {%TOMCAT_HOME}/conf/Catalina/localhost.

Edit the ROOT.xml and add the following:

<Context path="" crossContext="true">
<!-- JAAS -->

<!--<Realm
   className="org.apache.catalina.realm.JAASRealm"
   appName="PortalRealm"
   userClassNames="com.liferay.portal.kernel.security.jaas.PortalPrincipal"
   roleClassNames="com.liferay.portal.kernel.security.jaas.PortalRole"
 />-->

<!-- Uncomment the following to disable persistent sessions across reboots. -->

<!-- <Manager pathname="" /> -->

<!--
   Uncomment the following to not use sessions. See the property
   "session.disabled" in portal.properties.
 -->

<!-- <Manager className="com.liferay.support.tomcat.session.SessionLessManagerBase" /> -->
 </Context>

Edit {$TOMCAT_HOME}/conf/catalina.properties and replace
common.loader=${catalina.base}/lib,${catalina.base}/lib/*.jar,${catalina.home}/lib,${catalina.home}/lib/*.jar
with
common.loader=${catalina.base}/lib,${catalina.base}/lib/*.jar,${catalina.home}/lib,${catalina.home}/lib/*.jar,${catalina.home}/lib/ext,${catalina.home}/lib/ext/*.jar
Edit {$TOMCAT_HOME}/conf/server.xml and replace
<connector connectionTimeout="20000" port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1" redirectPort="8443" />
with
<connector connectionTimeout="20000" port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1" redirectPort="8443" URIEncoding="UTF-8" />
Navigate to {$TOMCAT_HOME}/webapps and delete support-catalina.jar if it exists.

4. Deploy the Liferay Portal war

Navigate to the folder {$TOMCAT_HOME}/webapps/ROOT and delete the contents.
Extract the contents of the portal .war to {$TOMCAT_HOME}/webapps/ROOT.
Open a command console to {$TOMCAT_HOME}/bin and enter the command startup.bat|sh to start the server.