Is it possible to turn off auto-start for some (but not all) app servers deployed on Tomcat?

Question

I want to deploy multiple versions of an app server on my local machine for development purposes (testing for compatibility, etc). I've got about 5 that I'll want to have installed at any given time, but really only need 1 or 2 of them on a day to day basis. I'd rather turn on/off the others on demand.

Originally I had problems deploying them all when I ran into memory issues, but setting -XX:MaxPermSize=256m took care of that. Now I've realized I don't need them all at once.

Is there a way to specify that certain applications should not auto-start?

Answer 1

You should be using the host-manager or the Tomcat manager for this. Also, in the server.xml file, you can turn off the ones you don't wanted started up by using this: DeployOnStartup="false"

Example:

<Host name="learn" appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true" xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false" DeployOnStartup="false">
    <Context path="" docBase="C:/Dev/web/learn/www" />
</Host>

Reference:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5067062/how-to-disable-specific-apps-in-tomcat