Install

How To Do the Initial Setup of ERDDAP™ on Your Server

ERDDAP™ can run on any server that supports Java and Tomcat (and other application servers like Jetty, but we don't support them). ERDDAP™ has been tested on Linux (including on Amazon's AWS), Mac, and Windows computers.

• Docker -- We provide ERDDAP™ in a Docker container and IOOS now offers a Quick Start Guide for ERDDAP™ in a Docker Container.
  It's the standard ERDDAP™ installation, in a Docker container.
  Through Docker Compose we provide easy ways to set up ssl and monitoring, read more in out Docker documentation.
  If you already use Docker, you will probably prefer the Docker version.
  If you are looking to run on cloud services you will probably prefer the Docker version.
• Amazon -- If you are installing ERDDAP™ on an Amazon Web Services EC2 instance, see this Amazon Web Services Overview first.
• Linux and Macs -- ERDDAP™ works great on Linux and Mac computers. See the instructions below.
• Windows -- Windows is fine for testing ERDDAP™ and for personal use (see the instructions below), but we don't recommend using it for public ERDDAPs. Running ERDDAP™ on Windows may have problems: notably, ERDDAP™ may be unable to delete and/or rename files quickly. This is probably due to antivirus software (e.g., from McAfee and Norton) which is checking the files for viruses. If you run into this problem (which can be seen by error messages in the log.txt file like "Unable to delete ..."), changing the antivirus software's settings may partially alleviate the problem. Or consider using a Linux or Mac server instead.

The standard ERDDAP™ installation instructions for Linux, Macs, and Windows computers are:

0. Make sure any dependencies are installed. On non-Windows machines (Linux and Mac), you need csh.

Java

1. For ERDDAP™ v2.19+, set up Java 21. For security reasons, it is almost always best to use the latest version of Java 21.
   Please download and install the latest version of
   Adoptium's OpenJDK (Temurin) 21 (LTS). To verify the installation, type "/javaJreBinDirectory/java -version", for example
   /usr/local/jdk-21.0.3+9/jre/bin/java -version

   ERDDAP™ works with Java from other sources, but we recommend Adoptium because it is the main, community-supported, free (as in beer and speech) version of Java 21 that offers Long Term Support (free upgrades for many years past the initial release). For security reasons, please update your ERDDAP's version of Java periodically as new versions of Java 21 become available from Adoptium.

   ERDDAP™ has been tested and used extensively with 21, not other versions. For various reasons, we don't test with nor support other versions of Java.
    

Tomcat

2. Set up Tomcat.
   Tomcat is the most widely used Java Application Server, which is Java software that stands between the operating system's network services and Java server software like ERDDAP™. It is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

   You can use another Java Application Server (e.g., Jetty), but we only test with and support Tomcat.
    

   • Download Tomcat and unpack it on your server or PC.
     For security reasons, it is almost always best to use the latest version of Tomcat 10 (version 9 and below are not acceptable) which is designed to work with Java 21 or newer. Below, the Tomcat directory will be referred to as tomcat.

     Warning! If you already have a Tomcat running some other web application (especially THREDDS), we recommend that you install ERDDAP™ in a second Tomcat, because ERDDAP™ needs different Tomcat settings and shouldn't have to contend with other applications for memory.

     • On Linux, download the "Core" "tar.gz" Tomcat distribution and unpack it. We recommend unpacking it in /usr/local.
     • On a Mac, Tomcat is probably already installed in /Library/Tomcat, but should update it to the latest version of Tomcat 10.
       If you download it, download the "Core" "tar.gz" Tomcat distribution and unpack it in /Library/Tomcat.
     • On Windows, you can download the "Core" "zip" Tomcat distribution (which doesn't mess with the Windows registry and which you control from a DOS command line) and unpack it in an appropriate directory. (For development, we use the "Core" "zip" distribution. We make a /programs directory and unpack it there.) Or you can download the "Core" "64-bit Windows zip" distribution, which includes more features. If the distribution is a Windows installer, it will probably put Tomcat in, for example, /Program Files/apache-tomcat-10.0.23 .
        

server.xml

• server.xml - In tomcat/conf/server.xml file, there are two changes that you should make to each of the two <Connector> tags- one for

        <Connector port="8080" 

and one for

        <Conector port="8443"

1. (Recommended) Increase the connectionTimeout parameter value, perhaps to 300000 (milliseconds) (which is 5 minutes).
2. (Recommended) Add a new parameter: relaxedQueryChars="[]|" This is optional and slightly less secure, but removes the need for users to percent-encode these characters when they occur in the parameters of a user's request URL.
    

content.xml

• context.xml -- Resources Cache - In tomcat/conf/context.xml, right before the </Context> tag, change the Resources tag (or add it if it isn't already there) to set the cacheMaxSize parameter to 80000:
  <Resources cachingAllowed="true" cacheMaxSize="80000" />
  This avoids numerous warnings in catalina.out that all start with
  "WARNING [main] org.apache.catalina.webresources.Cache.getResource Unable to add the resource at [/WEB-INF/classes/...]"
   

Apache Timeout

• On Linux computers, change the Apache timeout settings so that time-consuming user requests don't timeout (with what often appears as a "Proxy" or "Bad Gateway" error). As the root user:
  1. Modify the Apache httpd.conf file (usually in /etc/httpd/conf/ ):
     Change the existing <Timeout> setting (or add one at the end of the file) to 3600 (seconds), instead of the default 60 or 120 seconds.
     Change the existing <ProxyTimeout> setting (or add one at the end of the file) to 3600 (seconds), instead of the default 60 or 120 seconds.
  2. Restart Apache: /usr/sbin/apachectl -k graceful (but sometimes it is in a different directory).
      
  • Security recommendation: See these instructions to increase the security of your Tomcat installation, especially for public servers.
     
  • For public ERDDAP™ installations on Linux and Macs, it is best to set up Tomcat (the program) as belonging to user "tomcat" (a separate user with limited permissions and which has no password). Thus, only the super user can switch to acting as user tomcat. This makes it impossible for hackers to log in to your server as user tomcat. And in any case, you should make it so that the tomcat user has very limited permissions on the server's file system (read+write+execute privileges for the apache-tomcat directory tree and <bigParentDirectory> and read-only privileges for directories with data that ERDDAP™ needs access to).

    • You can create the tomcat user account (which has no password) by using the command
      sudo useradd tomcat -s /bin/bash -p '*'

    • You can switch to working as user tomcat by using the command
      sudo su - tomcat
      (It will ask you for the superuser password for permission to do this.)

    • You can stop working as user tomcat by using the command
      exit

    • Do most of the rest of the Tomcat and ERDDAP™ setup instructions as user "tomcat". Later, run the startup.sh and shutdown.sh scripts as user "tomcat" so that Tomcat has permission to write to its log files.

    • After unpacking Tomcat, from the parent of the apache-tomcat directory:

      • Change ownership of the apache-tomcat directory tree to the tomcat user.
        chown -R tomcat apache-tomcat-10.0.23
        (but substitute the actual name of your tomcat directory).
      • Change the "group" to be tomcat, your username, or the name of a small group that includes tomcat and all the administrators of Tomcat/ERDDAP, e.g.,
        chgrp -R yourUserName apache-tomcat-10.0.23
      • Change permissions so that tomcat and the group have read, write, execute privileges, e.g,.
        chmod -R ug+rwx apache-tomcat-10.0.23
      • Remove "other" user's permissions to read, write, or execute:
        chmod -R o-rwx apache-tomcat-10.0.23
        This is important, because it prevents other users from reading possibly sensitive information in ERDDAP™ setup files.

Memory

• Set Tomcat's Environment Variables

  On Linux and Macs:
  Create a file tomcat/bin/setenv.sh (or in Red Hat Enterprise Linux [RHEL], edit ~tomcat/conf/tomcat10.conf) to set Tomcat's environment variables. This file will be used by tomcat/bin/startup.sh and shutdown.sh. The file should contain something like:

    export JAVA\_HOME=/usr/local/jdk-21.0.3+9  
    export JAVA\_OPTS='-server -Djava.awt.headless=true -Xmx1500M -Xms1500M'  
    export TOMCAT\_HOME=/usr/local/apache-tomcat-_10.0.23_  
    export CATALINA\_HOME=/usr/local/apache-tomcat-_10.0.23_

(but substitute the directory names from your computer).
(If you previously set JRE_HOME, you can remove that.)
On Macs, you probably don't need to set JAVA_HOME.

On Windows:
Create a file tomcat\bin\setenv.bat to set Tomcat's environment variables. This file will be used by tomcat\bin\startup.bat and shutdown.bat. The file should contain something like:

    SET "JAVA\_HOME=\\_someDirectory_\\jdk-21.0.3+9"  
    SET "JAVA\_OPTS=-server -Xmx1500M -Xms1500M"  
    SET "TOMCAT\_HOME=\\Program Files\\apache-tomcat-_10.0.23_"  
    SET "CATALINA\_HOME=\\Program Files\\apache-tomcat-_10.0.23_"

(but substitute the directory names from your computer).
If this is just for local testing, remove "-server".
(If you previously set JRE_HOME, you can remove that.)

The -Xmx and -Xms memory settings are important because ERDDAP™ works better with more memory. Always set -Xms to the same value as -Xmx.

• For 32 bit Operating Systems and 32 bit Java:
  64 bit Java is much better than 32 bit Java, but 32 bit Java will work as long as the server isn't really busy. The more physical memory in the server the better: 4+ GB is really good, 2 GB is okay, less is not recommended. With 32 bit Java, even with abundant physical memory, Tomcat and Java won't run if you try to set -Xmx much above 1500M (1200M on some computers). If your server has less than 2GB of memory, reduce the -Xmx value (in 'M'egaBytes) to 1/2 of the computer's physical memory.

• For 64 bit Operating Systems and 64 bit Java:
  64 bit Java will only work on a 64 bit operating system.

  • With Java 8, you need to add -d64 to the Tomcat CATALINA_OPTS parameter in setenv.bat
  • With Java 21, you choose 64 bit Java when you download a version of Java marked "64 bit".

  With 64 bit Java, Tomcat and Java can use very high -Xmx and -Xms settings. The more physical memory in the server the better. As a simplistic suggestion: we recommend you set -Xmx and -Xms to (in 'M'egaBytes) to 1/2 (or less) of the computer's physical memory. You can see if Tomcat, Java, and ERDDAP™ are indeed running in 64 bit mode by searching for " bit," in ERDDAP's Daily Report email or in the bigParentDirectory/logs/log.txt file (bigParentDirectory is specified in setup.xml).

Garbage Collection

• In ERDDAP™'s log.txt file, you will see many "GC (Allocation Failure)" messages.
  This is usually not a problem. It is a frequent message from a normally operating Java saying that it just finished a minor garbage collection because it ran out of room in Eden (the section of the Java heap for very young objects). Usually the message shows you memoryUseBefore->memoryUseAfter. If those two numbers are close together, it means that the garbage collection wasn't productive. The message is only a sign of trouble if it is very frequent (every few seconds), not productive, and the numbers are large and not growing, which together indicate that Java needs more memory, is struggling to free up memory, and is unable to free up memory. This may happen during a stressful time, then go away. But if it persists, that is a sign of trouble.
• If you see java.lang.OutOfMemoryError's in ERDDAP™'s log.txt file, see OutOfMemoryError for tips on how to diagnose and resolve the problems.
   

Permissions

• On Linux and Macs, change the permissions of all *.sh files in tomcat/bin/ to be executable by the owner, e.g., with

    chmod +x \*.sh  

Fonts

• Fonts for images: We strongly prefer the free DejaVu fonts to the other Java fonts. Using these fonts is strongly recommended but not required.

  If you choose not to use the DejaVu fonts, you need to change the fontFamily setting in setup.xml to <fontFamily>SansSerif</fontFamily>, which is available with all Java distributions. If you set fontFamily to the name of a font that isn't available, ERDDAP™ won't load and will print a list of available fonts in the log.txt file. You must use one of those fonts.

  If you choose to use the DejaVu fonts, please make sure the fontFamily setting in setup.xml is <fontFamily>DejaVu Sans</fontFamily>.

  To install the DejaVu fonts, please download DejaVuFonts.zip (5,522,795 bytes, MD5=33E1E61FAB06A547851ED308B4FFEF42) and unzip the font files to a temporary directory.

  • On Linux:
    • For Linux Adoptium Java distributions, see these instructions.
    • With other Java distributions: As the Tomcat user, copy the font files into JAVA_HOME/lib/fonts so Java can find the fonts. Remember: if/when you later upgrade to a newer version of Java, you need to reinstall these fonts.
  • On Macs: for each font file, double click on it and then click Install Font.
  • On Windows 7 and 10: in Windows Explorer, select all of the font files. Right click. Click on Install.
     

Test Tomcat

• Test your Tomcat installation.

  • Linux:

    • As user "tomcat", run tomcat/bin/startup.sh
    • View your URL + ":8080/" in your browser (e.g., http://coastwatch.pfeg.noaa.gov:8080/).
    • You should see the Tomcat "Congratulations" page.
      If there is trouble, see the Tomcat log file tomcat/logs/catalina.out.

  • Mac (run tomcat as the system administrator user):

    • Run tomcat/bin/startup.sh
    • View your URL + ":8080/" in your browser (e.g., http://coastwatch.pfeg.noaa.gov:8080/). Note that by default, your Tomcat is only accessible by you. It is not publicly accessible.
    • You should see the Tomcat "Congratulations" page.
      If there is trouble, see the Tomcat log file tomcat/logs/catalina.out.

  • Windows localhost:

    • Right click on the Tomcat icon in the system tray, and choose "Start service".
    • View http://127.0.0.1:8080/, or perhaps http://localhost:8080/, in your browser. Note that by default, your Tomcat is only accessible by you. It is not publicly accessible.
    • You should see the Tomcat "Congratulations" page.
      If there is trouble, see the Tomcat log file tomcat/logs/catalina.out.

Troubles with the Tomcat installation?

• On Linux and Mac, if you can't reach Tomcat or ERDDAP™ (or perhaps you just can't reach them from a computer outside your firewall), you can test if Tomcat is listening to port 8080, by typing (as root) on a command line of the server:

    netstat -tuplen | grep 8080  

That should return one line with something like:

    tcp 0 0 :::8080 :::\* LISTEN ## ##### ####/java

(where '#' is some digit), indicating that a "java" process (presumably Tomcat) is listening on port "8080" for "tcp" traffic. If no lines were returned, if the line returned is significantly different, or if two or more lines were returned, then there may be a problem with the port settings.

• See the Tomcat log file tomcat/logs/catalina.out. Tomcat problems and some ERDDAP™ startup problems are almost always indicated there. This is common when you are first setting up ERDDAP™.
• See the Tomcat website or search the web for help, but please let us know the problems you had and the solutions you found.
• See our section on getting additional support.  

ERDDAP™ Content

3. Set up the tomcat/content/erddap configuration files.
   On Linux, Mac, and Windows, download erddapContent.zip (version 1.0.0, 20333 bytes, MD5=2B8D2A5AE5ED73E3A42B529C168C60B5, dated 2024-10-14) and unzip it into tomcat, creating tomcat/content/erddap .

   [Some previous versions are also available:
   2.17 (19,792 bytes, MD5=8F892616BAEEF2DF0F4BB036DCB4AD7C, dated 2022-02-16)
   2.18 (19,792 bytes, MD5=8F892616BAEEF2DF0F4BB036DCB4AD7C, dated 2022-02-16)
   2.21 (19,810 bytes, MD5=1E26F62E7A06191EE6868C40B9A29362, dated 2022-10-09)
   2.22 (19,810 bytes, MD5=1E26F62E7A06191EE6868C40B9A29362, dated 2022-12-08) 2.23 (19,810 bytes, MD5=1E26F62E7A06191EE6868C40B9A29362, dated 2023-02-27) and unzip it into tomcat, creating tomcat/content/erddap . ]

Other Directory

For Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or for other situations where you aren't allowed to modify the Tomcat directory or where you want/need to put the ERDDAP™ content directory in some other location for some other reason (for example, if you use Jetty instead of Tomcat), unzip erddapContent.zip into the desired directory (to which only user=tomcat has access) and set the erddapContentDirectory system property (e.g., erddapContentDirectory=~tomcat/content/erddap) so ERDDAP™ can find this new content directory.

setup.xml

• Read the comments in tomcat/content/erddap/setup.xml and make the requested changes. setup.xml is the file with all of the settings which specify how your ERDDAP™ behaves.
  For the initial setup, you MUST at least change these settings:

    <bigParentDirectory>, <emailEverythingTo>, <baseUrl>, <email.\*>, <admin.\*> (and <baseHttpsUrl> when you set up https).

When you create the bigParentDirectory, from the parent directory of bigParentDirectory:

• Make user=tomcat the owner of the bigParentDirectory, e.g.,

        chown -R tomcat _bigParentDirectory_

• Change the "group" to be tomcat, your username, or the name of a small group that includes tomcat and all the administrators of Tomcat/ERDDAP, e.g.,

        chgrp -R _yourUserName_ _bigParentDirectory_

• Change permissions so that tomcat and the group have read, write, execute privileges, e.g,.

        chmod -R ug+rwx _bigParentDirectory_

• Remove "other" user's permissions to read, write, or execute. This is important to prevent reading possibly sensitive information in ERDDAP™ log files and files with information about private datasets.:

        chmod -R o-rwx _bigParentDirectory_

Environment Variables

Starting with ERDDAP™ v2.13, ERDDAP™ administrators can override any value in setup.xml by specifying an environment variable named ERDDAP_valueName before running ERDDAP™. For example, use ERDDAP_baseUrl overrides the <baseUrl> value. This can be handy when deploying ERDDAP™ with a container like Docker, as you can put standard settings in setup.xml and then supply special settings via environment variables. If you supply secret information to ERDDAP™ via this method, be sure to check that the information will remain secret. ERDDAP™ only reads environment variables once per startup, in the first second of startup, so one way to use this is: set the environment variables, start ERDDAP, wait until ERDDAP™ is started, then unset the environment variables.

datasets.xml

• Read the comments in Working with the datasets.xml File. Later, after you get ERDDAP™ running for the first time (usually with just the default datasets), you will modify the XML in tomcat/content/erddap/datasets.xml to specify all of the datasets you want your ERDDAP™ to serve. This is where you will you spend the bulk of your time while setting up ERDDAP™ and later while maintaining your ERDDAP™.

  You can see an example datasets.xml on GitHub.  

• (Unlikely) Now or (slightly more likely) in the future, if you want to modify erddap's CSS file, make a copy of tomcat/content/erddap/images/erddapStart2.css called erddap2.css and then make changes to it. Changes to erddap2.css only take effect when ERDDAP™ is restarted and often also require the user to clear the browser's cached files.
    ERDDAP™ will not work correctly if the setup.xml or datasets.xml file isn't a well-formed XML file. So, after you edit these files, it is a good idea to verify that the result is well-formed XML by pasting the XML text into an XML checker like xmlvalidation.
   

Install the erddap.war file

4. On Linux, Mac, and Windows, download erddap.war into tomcat/webapps .
   (version 2.28.0, 620,824,288 bytes, MD5=f948b2ba603f65a83ac67af43da9e4c2, dated 08-29-2025)

   The .war file is big because it contains high resolution coastline, boundary, and elevation data needed to create maps.

   [Some previous versions are also available.
   2.17 (551,068,245 bytes, MD5=5FEA912B5D42E50EAB9591F773EA848D, dated 2022-02-16)
   2.18 (551,069,844 bytes, MD5=461325E97E7577EC671DD50246CCFB8B, dated 2022-02-23)
   2.21 (568,644,411 bytes, MD5=F2CFF805893146E932E498FDDBD519B6, dated 2022-10-09)
   2.22 (567,742,765 bytes, MD5=2B33354F633294213AE2AFDDCF4DA6D0, dated 2022-12-08) 2.23 (572,124,953 bytes, MD5=D843A043C506725EBD6F8EFDCCA8FD5F, dated 2023-03-03) 2.24 (568,748,187 bytes, MD5=970fbee172e28b0b8a07756eecbc898e, dated 2024-06-07) 2.25 (592,292,039 bytes, MD5=652AFC9D1421F00B5F789DA2C4732D4C, dated 2024-11-07) 2.26 (607,404,032 bytes, MD5=99a725108b37708e5420986c1616a119, dated 2025-03-31) 2.27.0 (620,554,403 bytes, MD5=3b2086c659eee4145ca2dff447bf4ef7, dated 06-11-2025) ]

ProxyPass

5. Use ProxyPass so users don't have to put the port number, e.g., :8080, in the URL.
   On Linux computers, if Tomcat is running in Apache, please modify the Apache httpd.conf file (usually in /etc/httpd/conf/ ) to allow HTTP traffic to/from ERDDAP™ without requiring the port number, e.g., :8080, in the URL. As the root user:
   1. Modify the existing <VirtualHost> tag (if there is one), or add one at the end of the file:

        <VirtualHost \*:80>
           ServerName _YourDomain.org_
           ProxyRequests Off
           ProxyPreserveHost On
           ProxyPass /erddap http://localhost:8080/erddap
           ProxyPassReverse /erddap http://localhost:8080/erddap
        </VirtualHost>

2. Then restart Apache: /usr/sbin/apachectl -k graceful (but sometimes it is in a different directory).
    

NGINX

(UNCOMMON) If you are using NGINX (a web server and load balancer):
in order to get NGINX and ERDDAP™ working correctly with https, you need to put the following snippet inside the Tomcat server.xml <Host> block:

    <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteIpValve"  
      remoteIpHeader="X-Forwarded-For"  
      protocolHeader="X-Forwarded-Proto"  
      protocolHeaderHttpsValue="https" /> 

And in the nginx config file, you need to set these headers:

      proxy\_set\_header Host              $host;
      proxy\_set\_header X-Real-IP         $remote\_addr;
      proxy\_set\_header REMOTE\_ADDR       $remote\_addr;
      proxy\_set\_header HTTP\_CLIENT\_IP    $remote\_addr;
      proxy\_set\_header X-Forwarded-For   $proxy\_add\_x\_forwarded\_for;
      proxy\_set\_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;

(Thanks to Kyle Wilcox.)
 

Start Tomcat

• (I don't recommend using the Tomcat Web Application Manager. If you don't fully shutdown and startup Tomcat, sooner or later you will have PermGen memory issues.)
   

• (In Linux or Mac OS, if you have created a special user to run Tomcat, e.g., tomcat, remember to do the following steps as that user.)
   

• If Tomcat is already running, shut down Tomcat with (in Linux or Mac OS) tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
  or (in Windows) tomcat\bin\shutdown.bat

  On Linux, use ps -ef | grep tomcat before and after shutdown.sh to make sure the tomcat process has stopped. The process should be listed before the shutdown and eventually not listed after the shutdown. It may take a minute or two for ERDDAP™ to fully shut down. Be patient. Or if it looks like it won't stop on its own, use:
  kill -9 processID

• Start Tomcat with (in Linux or Mac OS) tomcat/bin/startup.sh
  or (in Windows) tomcat\bin\startup.bat

Is ERDDAP™ running?

Use a browser to try to view http://www.YourServer.org/erddap/status.html
ERDDAP™ starts up without any datasets loaded. Datasets are loaded in a background thread and so become available one-by-one.

Troubleshooting

• When a request from a user comes in, it goes to Apache (on Linux and Mac OS computers), then Tomcat, then ERDDAP™.
• You can see what comes to Apache (and related errors) in the Apache log files.
• You can see what comes to Tomcat (and related errors) in the Tomcat log files (tomcat/logs/catalina.out and other files in that directory).
• You can see what comes to ERDDAP, diagnostic messages from ERDDAP, and error messages from ERDDAP, in the ERDDAP™ <bigParentDirectory>logs/log.txt file.
• Tomcat doesn't start ERDDAP™ until Tomcat gets a request for ERDDAP™. So you can see in the Tomcat log files if it started ERDDAP™ or if there is an error message related to that attempt.
• When ERDDAP™ starts up, it renames the old ERDDAP™ log.txt file (logArchivedAt_CurrentTime_.txt) and creates a new log.txt file. So if the log.txt file is old, it is a sign that ERDDAP™ hasn't recently restarted. ERDDAP™ writes log info to a buffer and only writes the buffer to the log file periodically, but you can force ERDDAP™ to write the buffer to the log file by visiting .../erddap/status.html.

Trouble: Old Version of Java

If you are using a version of Java that is too old for ERDDAP, ERDDAP™ won't run and you will see an error message in Tomcat's log file like
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError:
some/class/name: Unsupported major.minor version someNumber
The solution is to update to the most recent version of Java and make sure that Tomcat is using it.

Trouble: Slow Startup First Time

Tomcat has to do a lot of work the first time an application like ERDDAP™ is started; notably, it has to unpack the erddap.war file (which is like a .zip file). On some servers, the first attempt to view ERDDAP™ stalls (30 seconds?) until this work is finished. On other servers, the first attempt will fail immediately. But if you wait 30 seconds and try again, it will succeed if ERDDAP™ was installed correctly.
There is no fix for this. This is simply how Tomcat works. But it only occurs the first time after you install a new version of ERDDAP™.

Shut down and restart

In the future, to shut down (and restart) ERDDAP, see How to Shut Down and Restart Tomcat and ERDDAP.

Trouble?

Troubles installing Tomcat or ERDDAP? See our section on getting additional support.

Email Notification of New Versions of ERDDAP

If you want to receive an email whenever a new version of ERDDAP™ is available or other important ERDDAP™ announcements, you can join the ERDDAP™ announcements list here. This list averages roughly one email every three months.

Customize

Customize your ERDDAP™ to highlight your organization (not NOAA ERD).

• Change the banner that appears at the top of all ERDDAP™ .html pages by editing the <startBodyHtml5> tag in your datasets.xml file. (If there isn't one, copy the default from ERDDAP's
  [tomcat]/webapps/erddap/WEB-INF/classes/gov/noaa/pfel/erddap/util/messages.xml file into datasets.xml and edit it.) For example, you could:
  • Use a different image (i.e., your organization's logo).
  • Change the background color.
  • Change "ERDDAP" to "YourOrganization's ERDDAP"
  • Change "Easier access to scientific data" to "Easier access to YourOrganization's data".
  • Change the "Brought to you by" links to be links to your organization and funding sources.
• Change the information on the left side of the home page by editing the <theShortDescriptionHtml> tag in your datasets.xml file. (If there isn't one, copy the default from ERDDAP's
  [tomcat]/webapps/erddap/WEB-INF/classes/gov/noaa/pfel/erddap/util/messages.xml file into datasets.xml and edit it.) For example, you could:
  • Describe what your organization and/or group does.
  • Describe what kind of data this ERDDAP™ has.
• To change the icon that appears on browser tabs, put your organization's favicon.ico in tomcat/content/erddap/images/ . See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon.