containers/bitnami/tomcat

Bitnami Secure Image for Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat is an open-source web server designed to host and run Java-based web applications. It is a lightweight server with a good performance for applications running in production environments.

Overview of Apache Tomcat Trademarks: This software listing is packaged by Bitnami. The respective trademarks mentioned in the offering are owned by the respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.

TL;DR

docker run --name tomcat bitnami/tomcat:latest

You can find the default credentials and available configuration options in the Environment Variables section.

Why use Bitnami Secure Images?

Those are hardened, minimal CVE images built and maintained by Bitnami. Bitnami Secure Images are based on the cloud-optimized, security-hardened enterprise OS Photon Linux. Why choose BSI images?

• Hardened secure images of popular open source software with Near-Zero Vulnerabilities
• Vulnerability Triage & Prioritization with VEX Statements, KEV and EPSS Scores
• Compliance focus with FIPS, STIG, and air-gap options, including secure bill of materials (SBOM)
• Software supply chain provenance attestation through in-toto
• First class support for the internet’s favorite Helm charts

Each image comes with valuable security metadata. You can view the metadata in our public catalog here. Note: Some data is only available with commercial subscriptions to BSI.

If you are looking for our previous generation of images based on Debian Linux, please see the Bitnami Legacy registry.

How to deploy Apache Apache Tomcat in Kubernetes?

Deploying Bitnami applications as Helm Charts is the easiest way to get started with our applications on Kubernetes. Read more about the installation in the Bitnami Apache Apache Tomcat Chart GitHub repository.

Why use a non-root container?

Non-root container images add an extra layer of security and are generally recommended for production environments. However, because they run as a non-root user, privileged tasks are typically off-limits. Learn more about non-root containers in our docs.

Supported tags and respective Dockerfile links

Learn more about the Bitnami tagging policy and the difference between rolling tags and immutable tags in our documentation page.

Get this image

The recommended way to get the Bitnami Apache Tomcat Docker Image is to pull the prebuilt image from the Docker Hub Registry.

docker pull bitnami/tomcat:latest

To use a specific version, you can pull a versioned tag. You can view the list of available versions in the Docker Hub Registry.

docker pull bitnami/tomcat:[TAG]

If you wish, you can also build the image yourself by cloning the repository, changing to the directory containing the Dockerfile and executing the docker build command. Remember to replace the APP, VERSION and OPERATING-SYSTEM path placeholders in the example command below with the correct values.

git clone https://github.com/bitnami/containers.git
cd bitnami/APP/VERSION/OPERATING-SYSTEM
docker build -t bitnami/APP:latest .

Using docker-compose.yaml

Please be aware this file has not undergone internal testing. Consequently, we advise its use exclusively for development or testing purposes. For production-ready deployments, we highly recommend utilizing its associated Bitnami Helm chart.

Persisting your application

If you remove the container all your data and configurations will be lost, and the next time you run the image the database will be reinitialized. To avoid this loss of data, you should mount a volume that will persist even after the container is removed.

For persistence you should mount a directory at the /bitnami path. If the mounted directory is empty, it will be initialized on the first run.

Note

As this is a non-root container, the mounted files and directories must have the proper permissions for the UID 1001.

Deploying web applications on Apache Tomcat

The /bitnami/tomcat/data directory is configured as the Apache Tomcat webapps deployment directory. At this location, you either copy a so-called exploded web application, i.e. non-compressed, or a compressed web application resource (.WAR) file and it will automatically be deployed by Apache Tomcat.

Additionally a helper symlink /app is present that points to the webapps deployment directory which enables us to deploy applications on a running Apache Tomcat instance by simply doing:

docker cp /path/to/app.war tomcat:/app

In case you want to create a custom image that already contains your application war file, you need to add it to the /opt/bitnami/tomcat/webapps folder. In the example below we create a forked image with an extra .war file.

FROM bitnami/tomcat:latest
COPY sample.war /opt/bitnami/tomcat/webapps

Note! You can also deploy web applications on a running Apache Tomcat instance using the Apache Tomcat management interface.

Further Reading:

• Apache Tomcat Web Application Deployment

Configuration

The following section describes the supported environment variables

Environment variables

The following tables list the main variables you can set.

Customizable environment variables

Name	Description	Default Value
TOMCAT_SHUTDOWN_PORT_NUMBER	Tomcat shutdown port number.	8005
TOMCAT_HTTP_PORT_NUMBER	Tomcat HTTP port number.	8080
TOMCAT_AJP_PORT_NUMBER	Tomcat AJP port number.	8009
TOMCAT_USERNAME	Tomcat username.	manager
TOMCAT_PASSWORD	Tomcat password.	nil
TOMCAT_ALLOW_REMOTE_MANAGEMENT	Whether to allow connections from remote addresses to the Tomcat manager application.	yes
TOMCAT_ENABLE_AUTH	Whether to enable authentication for Tomcat manager applications.	yes
TOMCAT_ENABLE_AJP	Whether to enable the Tomcat AJP connector.	no
TOMCAT_START_RETRIES	The number or retries while waiting for Catalina to start.	12
TOMCAT_EXTRA_JAVA_OPTS	Additional Java settings for Tomcat.	nil
TOMCAT_INSTALL_DEFAULT_WEBAPPS	Whether to add default webapps (ROOT, manager, host-manager, etc.) for deployment.	yes
JAVA_OPTS	Java runtime parameters.	-Djava.awt.headless=true -XX:+UseG1GC -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -Djava.net.preferIPv4Addresses=true -Duser.home=${TOMCAT_HOME}

Read-only environment variables

Name	Description	Value
TOMCAT_BASE_DIR	Tomcat installation directory.	${BITNAMI_ROOT_DIR}/tomcat
TOMCAT_VOLUME_DIR	Tomcat persistence directory.	/bitnami/tomcat
TOMCAT_BIN_DIR	Tomcat directory for binary files.	${TOMCAT_BASE_DIR}/bin
TOMCAT_LIB_DIR	Tomcat directory for library files.	${TOMCAT_BASE_DIR}/lib
TOMCAT_WORK_DIR	Tomcat directory for runtime files.	${TOMCAT_BASE_DIR}/work
TOMCAT_WEBAPPS_DIR	Tomcat directory where webapps are stored.	${TOMCAT_VOLUME_DIR}/webapps
TOMCAT_CONF_DIR	Tomcat configuration directory.	${TOMCAT_BASE_DIR}/conf
TOMCAT_DEFAULT_CONF_DIR	Tomcat default configuration directory.	${TOMCAT_BASE_DIR}/conf.default
TOMCAT_CONF_FILE	Tomcat configuration file.	${TOMCAT_CONF_DIR}/server.xml
TOMCAT_USERS_CONF_FILE	Tomcat configuration file.	${TOMCAT_CONF_DIR}/tomcat-users.xml
TOMCAT_LOGS_DIR	Directory where Tomcat logs are stored.	${TOMCAT_BASE_DIR}/logs
TOMCAT_TMP_DIR	Directory where Tomcat temporary files are stored.	${TOMCAT_BASE_DIR}/temp
TOMCAT_LOG_FILE	Path to the log file for Tomcat.	${TOMCAT_LOGS_DIR}/catalina.out
TOMCAT_PID_FILE	Path to the PID file for Tomcat.	${TOMCAT_TMP_DIR}/catalina.pid
TOMCAT_HOME	Tomcat home directory.	$TOMCAT_BASE_DIR
TOMCAT_DAEMON_USER	Tomcat system user.	tomcat
TOMCAT_DAEMON_GROUP	Tomcat system group.	tomcat
JAVA_HOME	Java installation folder.	${BITNAMI_ROOT_DIR}/java

Creating a custom user

By default, a management user named manager is created and is not assigned a password. Passing the TOMCAT_PASSWORD environment variable when running the image for the first time will set the password of this user to the value of TOMCAT_PASSWORD.

Additionally you can specify a user name for the management user using the TOMCAT_USERNAME environment variable. When not specified, the TOMCAT_PASSWORD configuration is applied on the default user (manager).

Configuration files

During the initialization of the container, the default Apache Tomcat configuration files are modified with the basic options defined through environment variables. If you want to add more specific configuration options, you can always mount your own configuration files under /opt/bitnami/tomcat/conf/ to override the existing ones. Please note that those files should be writable by the system user of the container.

Refer to the Apache Tomcat configuration manual for the complete list of configuration options.

FIPS configuration in Bitnami Secure Images

The Bitnami Apache Tomcat Docker image from the Bitnami Secure Images catalog includes extra features and settings to configure the container with FIPS capabilities. You can configure the next environment variables:

• OPENSSL_FIPS: whether OpenSSL runs in FIPS mode or not. yes (default), no.

Logging

The Bitnami Apache Tomcat Docker image sends the container logs to the stdout. To view the logs:

docker logs tomcat

or using Docker Compose:

docker-compose logs tomcat

You can configure the containers logging driver using the --log-driver option if you wish to consume the container logs differently. In the default configuration docker uses the json-file driver.

Notable Changes

Debian: 9.0.26-r0, 8.5.46-r0, 8.0.53-r382, 7.0.96-r50. Oracle: 9.0.24-ol-7-r35, 8.5.45-ol-7-r34, 8.0.53-ol-7-r426, 7.0.96-ol-7-r61

• Decrease the size of the container. The configuration logic is now based on Bash scripts in the rootfs/ folder.

9.0.13-r27 , 8.5.35-r26, 8.0.53-r131 & 7.0.92-r20

• The Apache Tomcat container has been migrated to a non-root user approach. Previously the container ran as the root user and the Apache Tomcat daemon was started as the tomcat user. From now on, both the container and the Apache Tomcat daemon run as user 1001. As a consequence, the data directory must be writable by that user. You can revert this behavior by changing USER 1001 to USER root in the Dockerfile.

8.0.35-r3

• TOMCAT_USER parameter has been renamed to TOMCAT_USERNAME.

8.0.35-r0

• All volumes have been merged at /bitnami/tomcat. Now you only need to mount a single volume at /bitnami/tomcat for persistence.
• The logs are always sent to the stdout and are no longer collected in the volume.

License

Copyright © 2026 Broadcom. The term "Broadcom" refers to Broadcom Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.