In the hopes that this might be picked up by Google and help someone else out there. . .

I run a Fedora Core 5 (FC5) server at work. I’m in the process of migrating things to a new server that will be Fedora 7 (no longer called “core”).

We make use of Tomcat for java applications. However, upon installing Tomcat in the exact same way for Fedora 7 as I did for FC5, all I would see when trying to view my Tomcat server’s web pages were (totally) blank pages.

To replicate the problem (then the solution). . .

Install Java according to these instructions (though use the JDK instead): Link.

Install Tomcat like so:

>yum install tomcat5 tomcat5-webapps tomcat5-admin-webapps

Start the tomcat service (it should be available under the services GUI now. . . if not, restart the server).

Now, you too should be getting blank pages when you try to view http://localhost:8080

I had seen several reports that the F7 and FC6 default installations of tomcat were “bad” or “non-functional.” At that point, everyone appears to just give up. No solutions seem available out there other than to download the application from Jakarta and install it manually.

Here’s an easier “fix.” Though, I don’t know if this might be a bad idea.

The problem appears to be that Tomcat no longer likes the default installation of Java on FC6 or F7. Further, it won’t listen to you if you try to change JAVA_HOME via the /etc/tomcat5/tomcat5.conf file.

This is (apparently) because the /etc/tomcat5/tomcat5.conf file (where you’d think you should go!) is overridden by the /etc/sysconfig/tomcat5.conf file. So, make the change there, and all should work again.

For example. . . in /etc/sysconfig/tomcat5.conf, I made it:

JAVA_HOME="/opt/jdk1.6.0_02"

All now works!