Sneaky Tomcat

Ubuntu's Update Manager insisted for days and days that I needed to upgrade Tomcat's manager due to security patches. I should have just ignored it (just kidding).  After I went ahead with the update, I've spent hours and hours trying to resurrect the webapps installed in Tomcat before realizing what was actually going on. Reminder for next time: check which config settings did the upgrade changed, paying particular attention to how JAVA_HOME is being set and what are the new memory usage limits (for Tomcat6/Ubuntu this settings can be found in /etc/init.d/tomcat). More info can be found at Installing Tomcat 6 in Ubuntu. One more tip: after the settings have being fixed, Tomcat might still have trouble bringing back "online" all the webapps at once, so the option here is to let Tomcat bring them back one by one by moving the apps folders out of /tomcat/webapps.

Tip for Installing Hudson to Running Tomcat

Keeping the development environment restoration theme, today was the turn for Hudson which I don't wanted to let run standalone. Crucial point for integrating Hudson to a running Tomcat (gotten with Debian): set HUDSON_HOME to the CATALINA_OPT in the tomcat file. Follow Tomcat for Debian instructions in Tomcat - Hudson Wiki which apply to Tomcat6 too.