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Asked: 2012-05-21 10:57:32 +0800 CST

How does one get tomcat to bind to ipv4 address?

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I recently installed tomcat via an installation script from the apache solr typo3 community and spent the last 3 days trying to figure out why it won't work until by chance I noticed that when I queried the process listening on the port via "lsof -i", it was bound to the ipv6 protocol.

I have googled everywhere and most say that setting address to 0.0.0.0 in the tomcat connector resolves this issue, others say setting JAVA_OPTS="-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true".

I have tried the former which doesn't work but the latter I am unsure of where to put it. One solution I read somewhere suggested to put it in setenv.sh but I can't find this file in my tomcat installation. I would appreciate any help at the moment regarding this.

The tomcat version is 6.x and the OS is ubuntu 11.10.

Thanks

typo3 solr tomcat6

7 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Many suggested updating catalina.sh startup script. Yes, that solution would work, but catalina.sh script is not meant to be customized/updated. All changes should go into the customization script instead, i.e. setenv.sh.

    NOTE: TOMCAT_HOME/bin/setenv.sh doesn't exist by default, you need to create it. Check the catalina.sh script and you will see the startup script checks if setenv.sh exists, and executes if it does.

    So, I suggest you create new TOMCAT_HOME/bin/setenv.sh script with a single line:

    JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -Djava.net.preferIPv4Addresses=true "
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  2. Ok I finally solved it. I was directed to try this and Henk's solution. Neither of which seemed to work with the remote virtual server. I'm guessing the fact that because I'm on a shared kernel space so the provider prevents this. In any case I added: JAVA_OPTS= $JAVA_OPTS -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -Djava.net.preferIPv4Addresses to the catalina.sh startup script and that seemed to have fixed the issue of binding tomcat to ipv6.

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  3. The correct syntax for modifying catalina.sh would be:

    JAVA_OPTS=" $JAVA_OPTS -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -Djava.net.preferIPv4Addresses=true "
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  4. If you used this installer: "Apache Solr for TYPO3", you can change the address in the file server.xml. The default points to localhost, so look for 127.0.0.1 and change it into the IPv4-address you want. Don't forget to restart Tomcat6 for the changes to take effect.

    UPDATE, 20120521

    See my comment below on how to disable IPv6 on Ubuntu 11.10.

    I have successfully tested this on a Virtualbox-VM on my Mac. The address for the connector port 8080 has been changed from 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0 in server.xml.

    Then disabling IPv6 makes the "tcp6" to go away, so it's binded to an IPv4-only address.

    Before / with IPv6 enabled: 

    # netstat -anp | grep 8080   
tcp6       0      0 :::8080                 :::*                    LISTEN      1972/java

    After / IPv6 disabled:

    # netstat -anp | grep 8080   
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:8080            0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      2045/java
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  5. Along with the other answer using setenv.sh and CATALINA_OPTS...

    Using Tomcat SSL with APR, the only way I could get Tomcat to bind to ipv4 was to add this to the connector config:

    address="0.0.0.0"

    server.xml looks like this:

    <Connector port="8443" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11AprProtocol"
               maxThreads="150"
               SSLEnabled="true"
               scheme="https"
               compression="off"
               connectionTimeout="1190"
               address="0.0.0.0"
               >
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  6. While probably not the preferred method, I have observed that disabling IPv6 at the kernel level will convince Tomcat to open an IPv4 bind.

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  7. Debian 8 navigate to using your favorite editor on /etc/default/grub ; look for the section GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"** with then add ipv6.disable=1, as seen below

    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="ipv6.disable=1 quiet"

    Save and exit. In the same directory use your favorite editor on /etc/default/tomcat8 then look for the section with JAVA_OPTS= which will be commented out, add the following below that line. JAVA_OPTS=" $JAVA_OPTS -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -Djava.net.preferIPv4Addresses=true"

    Save and exit

    At the command prompt type update-grub , if you have sudo use with sudo, then restart tomcat8 service tomcat8 restart

    You should be on IPv4 now.

    Please in future posts include complete paths and file names. Thank You

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