Tomcat...apache...linux

Question

like doing so that each user of a server in linux has his own folder of examples to be able to create and to compile his applications jsp without having to be root?

Answer 1

For each user you want to have this ability, you should add that user to the 'tomcat' group for your system, which may be 'tomcat4' depending on which version of Tomcat you run. This will allow all users to edit each other's jsps though which you may not want.
If you want to prevent that, don't add them all to the tomcat group and create a folder under $CATALINA_HOME/webapps for each user and make that user the owner and tomcat.
So if your users are fred and bob. Try this:
root@localhost:/ # mkdir /var/tomcat4/webapps/bob
root@localhost:/ # chown bob:tomcat4 /var/tomcat4/webapps/bob
root@localhost:/ # mkdir /var/tomcat4/webapps/fred
root@localhost:/ # chown fred:tomcat4 /var/tomcat4/webapps/fred
You may want to look closely at the default permissions created in order to reduce security risks.
This way your user bob can find his webapp at http://yourserver:8080/bob.
Hope that helps.