How to start Tomcat at boot time on CentOS

If you use Tomcat for you Java app, you will most probably encouter a situation where Tomcat doesn't load  after reboot.

This due to, as at the time of writing ,Tomcat doesn't have its built-in or default startup script included.
As usual, after some googling, found out the script below creates a custom Tomcat service and load tomcat automatically at startup.

#!/bin/bash
#
# Tomcat Server
#
# chkconfig: 345 96 30
# description:  Start up the Tomcat servlet engine.

# Source function library.
. /etc/init.d/functions


RETVAL=$?
 CATALINA_HOME="/opt/tomcat"

start() {
        if [ -f $CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh ];
          then
            echo $"Starting Tomcat"
            /bin/su tomcat $CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh
        fi
        sleep 2
}
stop() {
        if [ -f $CATALINA_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh ];
          then
            echo $"Stopping Tomcat"
            /bin/su tomcat $CATALINA_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh
        fi

}

case "$1" in
 start)
        start
        ;;
 stop)
        stop
        ;;
 restart)
        stop
        sleep 2
        start
        ;;

 *)
        echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

exit $RETVAL

 In order to support chkconfig, an init script must:
1.  Be located in /etc/rc.d/init.d (which /etc/init.d is a symlink to)
2.  Have a commented out line that contains “chkconfig: <default  runlevels for this service> <start priority> <stop priority>”
3.  Have a commented out line that contains “description: <a description of the service>”
4.  Upon successful service startup, place a lock file in  /var/lock/subsys that matches the name of the service script.  Upon  successful service shutdown, the lockfile must be removed.

5. If the avove doesn't wotk. Add symbolic link for /etc/init.d/tomcat to  etc/rc.d/rc2.d/S96tomcat, /etc/rc.d/rc1.d/K99tomcat 

Reference:
http://adityo.blog.binusian.org/?tag=redhat-run-level-and-how-to-make-tomcat-service-to-run-on-boot-time-in-centos

Update: If you install Tomcat from Yum, init script is already included, just run /etc/init.d/tomcat7 start/stop/restart