How to install Headwind MDM on Ubuntu 20.04?

Question

I have troubles installing Headwind MDM on Ubuntu 20.04. When I'm trying to install Tomcat 8, it tells me:

E: Package 'tomcat8' has no installation candidate

How to proceed with installation?

Answer 1

Use Tomcat 9 instead of Tomcat 8. To install Tomcat 9, use the command:

# apt install tomcat9

There are two important things while installing Headwind MDM with Tomcat 9.

1. Tomcat 9 runs in the sandbox. Which means, it has no access to filesystem outside /var/lib/tomcat9. Therefore, when the installer script prompts for Headwind MDM directory and defaults it to /opt/hmdm, change it to some other directory accessible to Tomcat, for example, /var/lib/tomcat9/work. The installer script warns you about that, so just be attentive.

2. There is no catalina.out by default. To view the log file in the case of errors, look into /var/lib/tomcat9/logs/catalina.YYYY-MM-DD.log (where YYYY-MM-DD is the current date). Or use journalctl:

# journalctl -f -u tomcat9.service

Comments

To fix the sandbox limitation for Tomcat 9, one can update the systemd snadbox, see details here: https://salsa.debian.org/java-team/tomcat9/blob/master/debian/README.Debian

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The version of Tomcat 9 included in Ubuntu 20.04 by default has known issues with HTTPS. If you get issues with HTTPS, try to upgrade Tomcat 9 to the latest version manually.

Answer 2

The Tomcat version installed by default by apt in Ubuntu 20.04 is 9.0.31. 

To check which version is installed on your server, run the command:

/usr/share/tomcat9/bin/version.sh

This version has an issue preventing Headwind MDM from running! When HTTPS is set up and you are trying to upload APK files, Tomcat 9.0.31 aborts the connection and responds with error 400 without any diagnostics.

If you encounter this issue, consider upgrading Tomcat to the latest version. Here is how to:

VERSION=9.0.40

wget https://archive.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-9/v${VERSION}/bin/apache-tomcat-${VERSION}.tar.gz

tar -zxf apache-tomcat-${VERSION}.tar.gz

cd apache-tomcat-${VERSION}

chmod a+x bin

chmod a+x lib

chmod -R a+r bin

chmod -R a+r lib

chmod a+x bin/*.sh

mv /usr/share/tomcat9/bin /usr/share/tomcat9/bin~

mv /usr/share/tomcat9/lib /usr/share/tomcat9/lib~

cp -r bin /usr/share/tomcat9

cp -r lib /usr/share/tomcat9

service tomcat9 restart