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How to install and configure ThreadFix on CentOS. While these instructions should apply to RHEL as well, the following instructions were developed and tested against CentOS 7.

Prerequisites

Audience: IT Professional and/or End User
Difficulty: Intermediate
Time needed: Approximately 60 minutes
Tools required: OpenJDK 8, latest version of OpenJDK 11 or Oracle Java 8, latest version of Tomcat 8.5, MySQL or Microsoft SQL Server

Install Java

To check the currently-installed version, run the java -version command.

OpenJDK 11

OpenJDK 11 - Click to expand

ThreadFix version 2.7.9 and newer can run on OpenJDK 11 (version 11.0.5 or newer), OpenJDK 8, or Oracle Java 8, shown in the sections below. If you don't have OpenJDK 11 installed, you can install it by running the following command:

sudo yum install java-11-openjdk

If you have multiple JDKs installed, run the sudo alternatives --config java command and select the version installed above.

OpenJDK 8

OpenJDK 8 - Click to expand

ThreadFix version 2.7 and newer can run on OpenJDK 8 or Oracle Java 8, shown in the next section. If you don't have OpenJDK 8 installed, you can install it by running the following command:

sudo yum install java-1.8.0-openjdk

If you have multiple JDKs installed, run the sudo alternatives --config java command and select the version installed above.

Oracle Java 8

Oracle Java 8 - Click to expand

To deploy versions of ThreadFix 2.6.2.6 and older, visit the Oracle JDK download page here and look for the .rpm version of the Linux x64 distribution. Copy the download link and wget it.
Example wget command to download the jdk-8u192-linux-x64.rpm file:

wget --no-cookies --no-check-certificate --header "Cookie: gpw_e24=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oracle.com%2F; oraclelicense=accept-securebackup-cookie" "https://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/8u192-b12/750e1c8617c5452694857ad95c3ee230/jdk-8u192-linux-x64.rpm"

Install with yum localinstall.

Example using the file downloaded above:

sudo yum localinstall jdk-8u192-linux-x64.rpm

The JDK should be installed at /usr/java/<jdk-version> (e.g., /usr/java/jdk1.8.0_192). You can verify the install using the java -version command. If you have multiple JDKs installed, run the sudo alternatives --config java command and select the version installed above.

Install and Configure Tomcat 8.5

ThreadFix recommends the latest version of Tomcat 8.5. Note versions prior to 8.5.78 are not recommended due to security exploit CVE-2022-22965.

Download the latest version of Tomcat 8.5.

For the current version of ThreadFix, yum is not recommended for installing Tomcat. Getting the latest version of Tomcat 8.5 directly with wget is the preferred method. The link to the tarball is provided by the official Apache Tomcat site and it is a mirror site hosting the most recent version.

wget https://dlcdn.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-8/v8.5.83/bin/apache-tomcat-8.5.83.tar.gz

If the above command doesn't work, the download may have been moved/updated. Browse to https://tomcat.apache.org/download-80.cgi to determine the most recent version available.

2. Create a directory to install Tomcat, then extract the tar ball there.

sudo mkdir /opt/tomcat
sudo tar xvf apache-tomcat-8*tar.gz -C /opt/tomcat --strip-components=1

3. Create a group and user to manage the Tomcat execution.

sudo groupadd tomcat
sudo useradd -s /bin/false -g tomcat -d /opt/tomcat tomcat

Web.xml Update

For compatibility with Tomcat 8.5.43 and newer, make the following update:

Open the <tomcat-deploy>/conf/web.xml file in a text editor with elevated privilege and edit the default servlet as follows:

OLD

Old - Click to expand

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>default</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>debug</param-name>
        <param-value>0</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>listings</param-name>
        <param-value>false</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

NEW

New - Click to expand

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>default</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>debug</param-name>
        <param-value>0</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>listings</param-name>
        <param-value>false</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>fileEncoding</param-name>
        <param-value>UTF-8</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

(Note that the above adds the fileEncoding parameter and sets its value to UTF-8.)

Enable Tomcat Service

If you want tomcat to run as a service that you can have start automatically at boot, the preferred method is using systemd. Create a file at /etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service with the following content. CentOS systemd Tomcat Service:

Enable Tomcat Service - Click to expand

# Systemd unit file for tomcat
[Unit]
Description=Apache Tomcat Web Application Container
After=syslog.service network.target
 
[Service]
Type=forking
 
Environment=JAVA_HOME=/usr
Environment=CATALINA_PID=/opt/tomcat/temp/tomcat.pid
Environment=CATALINA_HOME=/opt/tomcat
Environment=CATALINA_BASE=/opt/tomcat
Environment='CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms2G -Xmx8G -server -XX:+UseParallelGC'
Environment='JAVA_OPTS=-Djava.awt.headless=true -Djava.security.egd=file:/dev/./urandom'
 
ExecStart=/opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
ExecStop=/bin/kill -15 $MAINPID
 
User=tomcat
Group=tomcat
UMask=0007
RestartSec=10
Restart=always
 
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Reload Systemd to load the Tomcat unit file and enable the tomcat.service.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable tomcat.service

SSL/TLS Implementation

For information on configuring Tomcat to run over SSL/TLS, refer to the following article.

Install and Configure the Database

To install and configure MySQL, refer to the CentOS MySQL Installation and Configuration page.
To install and configure Microsoft SQL Server, refer to the Windows SQL Server Configuration page.

Install and Configure ThreadFix

Once you've followed the steps above, you're ready to install ThreadFix. Please see the ThreadFix Installation guide to complete your deployment.

CentOS Enterprise Setup