I wish that tomcat can be part of linux installation tools like yum in fedora. I've been struggling for the past 2 hours trying to install the tomcat properly and am not sure its the most proper but for development purposes I think it would be more than enough & since there are very few websites that talk you through the installation process step by step. so, its also a chance to share the experience

First of all, two things you must download before you start with anything
1. JDK (Java development kit) from sun website.
2. Then you will have to download the tomcat at apache website.

The second step, is to extract the JDK, either it is tar file or rpm files it will into a directory where ever you place it (we will assume this path /home/mo/jdk/).

Finally is to extract the tomcat files (if we assume that you extracted under /home/mo/tomcat/) then you must setup the java home directory

export JAVA_HOME='/home/mo/jdk/'

then you must setup the home directory for the tomcat as following

export CATALINA_HOME='/home/mo/tomcat/'

Now, you must do this step

cd $CATALINA_HOME/bin
    tar xvfz jsvc.tar.gz
    cd jsvc-src
    autoconf
    ./configure
    make
    cp jsvc ..
    cd ..

then open your browser and access your tomcat and see, by default it is set on port 8080. so, you must enter the URL as following

http://localhost:8080/

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