As we all are familiar with virtual hosting in Apache and we can isolate each users to publish their sites to a folder under thier home directory. So there is no any issue with operating the files copied on the hosting root.
Earlier I had started tomcat from the root account and created Virtual hosting in tomcat and isolate the hosting root according to the users. The issue I had faced is none of the FTP users to modify/delete the files in their hosting root since all the files are owned by the root account because of root user is operating tomcat service.
So I have to gave ssh access to the server and gave sudo command to deploy users newly uploaded files. So it’s a security threat to allow users to have ssh access and permit to operate sudo commands.
After few R&D I decided to run the tomcat service from a normal user who does not have shell access
Solution :
1. create new user and group for tomcat user
#useradd -g tomcat tomcat
2. Permitting tomcat users to access the Tomcat installation files
3. Start the tomcat daemon within the user account.
[tomcat@rc-040 ~]$ cd /usr/local/apache-tomcat-6.0.29/bin/
[tomcat@rc-040 bin]$ sh startup.sh
Using CATALINA_BASE: /usr/local/apache-tomcat-6.0.29
Using CATALINA_HOME: /usr/local/apache-tomcat-6.0.29
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /usr/local/apache-tomcat-6.0.29/temp
Using JRE_HOME: /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_14
Using CLASSPATH: /usr/local/apache-tomcat-6.0.29/bin/bootstrap.jar
[tomcat@rc-040 bin]$ netstat -nlp | grep "java"
(Not all processes could be identified, non-owned process info
will not be shown, you would have to be root to see it all.)
tcp 0 0 :::8080 :::* LISTEN 1837/java
[tomcat@rc-040 bin]$
You almost done !!! 
Creating FTP users and Virtual hosting
a. An example of Virtualhost entry is showing below,
b. FTP user creation
1. create new user and set their primary group as tomcat.
[root@rc-040 public_html]# chown -R ftpuser.tomcat /home/ftpuser/public_html
Setting sticky bit on the web directory where both users would have the same access
That’s it !!!!! Everything set..
Now upload your war file named as “ROOT.war” under the public_html folder and see the application running … There is not need to restart the tomcat to deploy new application, Just like we do with Apache
You will get the sample war file from here “http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/appdev/sample/sample.war” for the initial testing.
Here are the some useful file locations/path if you plan to run the Tomcat as a backend server over the AJP connector in Apache ( Recommended by me )
1. /etc/httpd/modules/mod_jk.so
2. /etc/httpd/conf.d/jk.conf
3. /etc/httpd/conf.d/workers.properties
4. /etc/httpd/conf.d/javasite1.conf
/etc/httpd/modules/mod_jk.so
[root@rc-040 public_html]# cat /etc/httpd/conf.d/jk.conf
LoadModule jk_module /usr/lib/httpd/modules/mod_jk.so
JkWorkersFile /etc/httpd/conf.d/workers.properties
JkShmFile /var/log/httpd/mod_jk.shm
JkLogFile /var/log/httpd/mod_jk.log
JkLogLevel info
JkLogStampFormat "[%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y] "
[root@rc-040 public_html]# cat /etc/httpd/conf.d/workers.properties
# Define 1 real worker using ajp13
worker.list=worker1
# Set properties for worker1 (ajp13)
worker.worker1.type=ajp13
worker.worker1.host=localhost
worker.worker1.port=8009
[root@rc-040 public_html]#
A sample Apache virtualhost entry
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName mydomain.com
ServerAlias wwww.mydomain.com
DocumentRoot /home/ftpuser/public_html
DirectoryIndex index.html dplpool/
Alias / /home/ftpuser/public_html
ErrorLog logs/selfcare-javahost.log
JkMount /*.jsp worker1
#JkMount / worker1
JkMount /* worker1
</VirtualHost>
