Reading and writing files outside tomcat directory

[noobie45]

I have an application whose class files are in /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes

It uses the following line to write a file called java.php:
FileOutputStream fout  = new FileOutputStream ("/usr/local/tomcat/webapps/ROOT/java.php", true);

It does this perfectly.

What I want is to write this file to a directory outside the tomcat directory. e.g. to /var/www/newdir

In Tomcat under Windows I have no problem doing this. Tomcat is installed in F: and I can write to my apache directory c:\Apache2\htdocs by putting this file path in the above code line.

But Tomcat under Linux does not allow me to do this, apparently for security reasons. But security does not really matter for me because this application won't be open. How do I read and write files outside the home directory?

[Peter Crowther]

Tomcat version?
Installed from tomcat.apache.org or a third-party repackaged version?
If repackaged, look at the docs - are you running under a security manager?

- Peter

2009/11/3 noobie45 <philip.george@...>

>
> I have an application whose class files are in
> /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes
>
> It uses the following line to write a file called java.php:
> FileOutputStream fout  = new FileOutputStream
> ("/usr/local/tomcat/webapps/ROOT/java.php", true);
>
> It does this perfectly.
>
> What I want is to write this file to a directory outside the tomcat
> directory. e.g. to /var/www/newdir
>
> In Tomcat under Windows I have no problem doing this. Tomcat is installed
> in
> F: and I can write to my apache directory c:\Apache2\htdocs by putting this
> file path in the above code line.
>
> But Tomcat under Linux does not allow me to do this, apparently for
> security
> reasons. But security does not really matter for me because this
> application
> won't be open. How do I read and write files outside the home directory?
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://old.nabble.com/Reading-and-writing-files-outside-tomcat-directory-tp26160054p26160054.html
> Sent from the Tomcat - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
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[awarnier]

noobie45 wrote:

> I have an application whose class files are in
> /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes
>
> It uses the following line to write a file called java.php:
> FileOutputStream fout  = new FileOutputStream
> ("/usr/local/tomcat/webapps/ROOT/java.php", true);
>
> It does this perfectly.
>
> What I want is to write this file to a directory outside the tomcat
> directory. e.g. to /var/www/newdir
>
> In Tomcat under Windows I have no problem doing this. Tomcat is installed in
> F: and I can write to my apache directory c:\Apache2\htdocs by putting this
> file path in the above code line.
>
> But Tomcat under Linux does not allow me to do this, apparently for security
> reasons. But security does not really matter for me because this application
> won't be open. How do I read and write files outside the home directory?

Maybe just verify that the user-id under which Tomcat runs has the
permission to write to the directory where you tell it to write ?

Under Windows, you do not see that problem because you are probably
running the Tomcat service under the user-id "LocalSystem", which has
extensive access rights to all local resources.
But under Unix/Linux, Tomcat will be running as some user (tomcat5 ?),
which does not by default have writing rights to /var/www, or wherever
your webserver directory is.
It is not a Tomcat-level permission issue, it is a OS-level permission
issue.


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[noobie45]

The Tomcat is installed on my site under Debian. I think it's the standard version with directories in the usual places.

[noobie45]

Thank you so much.

I am absolutely new to Tomcat on Linux.

I need to figure out what you mean by "user-id under which Tomcat runs".

[noobie45]

I used my ftp client (WinSCP) to change file permissions for the directory to R,W,X for others and now I am able to write the file outside the Tomcat directory.

Thanks again so much.

[Ognjen Blagojevic-3]

noobie45 wrote:
> Thank you so much.
>
> I am absolutely new to Tomcat on Linux.
>
> I need to figure out what you mean by "user-id under which Tomcat runs".

Every process on Linux is ran by a certain user. With command "ps -ef",
you can list all the processes and users that run them (first column
from left).

You can easily identify Tomcat process by recognizing Java executable,
something like:

tomcat   28710     1  5 10:43 ?        00:00:17
/usr/java/default/bin/java
-Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager
-Djava.util.logging.config.file=/usr/local/tomcat/conf/logging.properties
-Dorg.apache.el.parser.COERCE_TO_ZERO=false -XX:MaxPermSize=300m
-Xms300m -Xmx400m -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/usr/local/tomcat/endorsed
-classpath :/usr/local/tomcat/bin/bootstrap.jar
-Dcatalina.base=/usr/local/tomcat -Dcatalina.home=/usr/local/tomcat
-Djava.io.tmpdir=/usr/local/tomcat/temp
org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap start


Here you can see that Tomcat server is started as Java application
packed in bootstrap.jar file, invoked by default JVM
(/usr/java/default/bin/java), and ran by user "tomcat". On some system
the user can be "root" or something else.

Now, to go back to the original question: if the user that is running
Tomcat server have privileges to read or write to any directory on the
file system, so will the tomcat web application. (At least if the
security manager is turned off which is default setting.)

Regards,
Ognjen

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[noobie45]

Thanks. I just tried out the command and got the list of users including tomcat.