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System Properties

Introduction

The follow sections list the system properties that may be set to modify the default Tomcat behaviour.

Servlet container and connectors

AttributeDescription
catalina.useNaming

If this is false it will override the useNaming attribute for all Context elements.

jvmRoute

Provides a default value for the jvmRoute attribute of the Engine element. It does not override the a value configured on the Engine element.

org.apache.catalina.loader. WebappClassLoader.ENABLE_CLEAR_REFERENCES

If true, Tomcat attempts to null out any static or final fields from loaded classes when a web application is stopped as a work around for apparent garbage collection bugs and application coding errors.

There have been some issues reported with log4j when this option is true.

Applications without memory leaks using recent JVMs should operate correctly with this option set to false.

If not specified, the default value of true will be used.

catalina.config

The URL for the catalina.properties configuration file.

org.apache.tomcat.tomcat.util.buf.StringCache.byte.enabled

If true, the String cache is enabled for ByteChunk. If not specified, the default value of false will be used.

org.apache.tomcat.tomcat.util.buf.StringCache.char.enabled

If true, the String cache is enabled for CharChunk. If not specified, the default value of false will be used.

org.apache.tomcat.tomcat.util.buf.StringCache.trainThreshold

The number of times toString() must be called before the cache is activated. If not specified, the default value of 20000 will be used.

org.apache.tomcat.tomcat.util.buf.StringCache.cacheSize

The size of the String cache. If not specified, the default value of 200 will be used.

org.apache.tomcat.tomcat.util.buf.StringCache.maxStringSize

The maximum length of String that will be cached. If not specified, the default value of 128 will be used.

org.apache.tomcat.util. http.FastHttpDateFormat.CACHE_SIZE

The size of the cache to use parsed and formatted date value. If not specified, the default value of 1000 will be used.

org.apache.catalina.core. StandardService.DELAY_CONNECTOR_STARTUP

If true, the connector startup will not be done automatically. Useful in embedded mode.

org.apache.catalina.connector. Request.SESSION_ID_CHECK

If true, the Servet container will verify that a session exists in a context with the specified session id before creating a session with that id.

org.apache.coyote. USE_CUSTOM_STATUS_MSG_IN_HEADER

If this is true custom HTTP status messages will be used within HTTP headers. Users must ensure that any such message is ISO-8859-1 encoded, particularly if user provided input is included in the message, to prevent a possible XSS vulnerability. If not specified the default value of false will be used.

org.apache.tomcat.util. http.ServerCookie.VERSION_SWITCH

If using cookie values which have to be quoted to be valid and v0 cookies, this will cause an automatic switch to v1 cookies. If not specified, the default value of true will be used.

EL

AttributeDescription
org.apache.el.parser.COERCE_TO_ZERO

If true, when coercing expressions to numbers "" and null will be coerced to zero as required by the specification. If not specified, the default value of true will be used.

JSP

AttributeDescription
org.apache.jasper.compiler. Generator.VAR_EXPRESSIONFACTORY

The name of the variable to use for the expression language expression factory. If not specified, the default value of _el_expressionfactory will be used.

org.apache.jasper.compiler. Generator.VAR_INSTANCEMANAGER

The name of the variable to use for the instance manager factory. If not specified, the default value of _jsp_instancemanager will be used.

org.apache.jasper.compiler. Parser.STRICT_QUOTE_ESCAPING

If false the requirements for escpaing quotes in JSP attributes will be relaxed so that a missing required quote will not cause an error. If not specified, the specification compliant default of true will be used.

org.apache.jasper.runtime. JspFactoryImpl.USE_POOL

If true, a ThreadLocal PageContext pool will be used. If not specified, the default value of true will be used.

org.apache.jasper.runtime. JspFactoryImpl.POOL_SIZE

The size of the ThreadLocal PageContext. If not specified, the default value of 8 will be used.

org.apache.jasper.Constants. JSP_SERVLET_BASE

The base class of the Servlets generated from the JSPs. If not specified, the default value of org.apache.jasper.runtime.HttpJspBase will be used.

org.apache.jasper.Constants. SERVICE_METHOD_NAME

The name of the service method called by the base class. If not specified, the default value of _jspService will be used.

org.apache.jasper.Constants. SERVLET_CLASSPATH

The name of the ServletContext attribute that provides the classpath for the JSP. If not specified, the default value of org.apache.catalina.jsp_classpath will be used.

org.apache.jasper.Constants. JSP_FILE

The name of the request attribute for <jsp-file> element of a servlet definition. If present on a request, this overrides the value returned by request.getServletPath() to select the JSP page to be executed. If not specified, the default value of org.apache.catalina.jsp_file will be used.

org.apache.jasper.Constants. PRECOMPILE

The name of the query parameter that causes the JSP engine to just pregenerate the servlet but not invoke it. If not specified, the default value of org.apache.catalina.jsp_precompile will be used.

org.apache.jasper.Constants. JSP_PACKAGE_NAME

The default package name for compiled jsp pages. If not specified, the default value of org.apache.jsp will be used.

org.apache.jasper.Constants. TAG_FILE_PACKAGE_NAME

The default package name for tag handlers generated from tag files. If not specified, the default value of org.apache.jsp.tag will be used.

org.apache.jasper.Constants. ALT_DD_ATTR

The servlet context attribute under which the alternate deployment descriptor for this web application is stored. If not specified, the default value of org.apache.catalina.deploy.alt_dd will be used.

org.apache.jasper.Constants. TEMP_VARIABLE_NAME_PREFIX

Prefix to use for generated temporary variable names. If not specified, the default value of _jspx_temp will be used.

org.apache.jasper.Constants. USE_INSTANCE_MANAGER_FOR_TAGS

If true, the instance manager is used to obtain tag handler instances. If not specified, false will be used.

org.apache.jasper.Constants. USE_INSTANCE_MANAGER_FOR_TAGS

If true, annotations specified in tags will be processed and injected. This can have a performance impact when using simple tags, or if tag pooling is disabled. If not specified, true will be used.

Security

AttributeDescription
org.apache.catalina.connector. RECYCLE_FACADES

If this is true or if a security manager is in use a new facade object will be created for each request. If not specified, the default value of false will be used.

org.apache.catalina.connector. CoyoteAdapter.ALLOW_BACKSLASH

If this is true the '\' character will be permitted as a path delimiter. If not specified, the default value of false will be used.

org.apache.tomcat.util.buf. UDecoder.ALLOW_ENCODED_SLASH

If this is true '%2F' and '%5C' will be permitted as path delimiters. If not specified, the default value of false will be used.

Specification

AttributeDescription
org.apache.catalina. STRICT_SERVLET_COMPLIANCE

If this is true the following actions will occur:

  • any wrapped request or response object passed to an application dispatcher will be checked to ensure that it has wrapped the original request or response. (SRV.8.2 / SRV.14.2.5.1)
  • a call to Response.getWriter() if no character encoding has been specified will result in subsequent calls to Response.getCharacterEncoding() returning ISO-8859-1 and the Content-Type response header will include a charset=ISO-8859-1 component. (SRV.15.2.22.1)
  • every request that is associated with a session will cause the session's last accessed time to be updated regardless of whether or not the request explicity accesses the session. (SRV.7.6)

org.apache.catalina.core. StandardWrapperValve.SERVLET_STATS

If true or if org.apache.catalina.STRICT_SERVLET_COMPLIANCE is true, the wrapper will collect the JSR-77 statistics for individual servlets. If not specified, the default value of false will be used.

org.apache.catalina.session. StandardSession.ACTIVITY_CHECK

If this is true or if org.apache.catalina.STRICT_SERVLET_COMPLIANCE is true Tomcat will track the number of active requests for each session. When determining if a session is valid, any session with at least one active request will always be considered valid. If not specified, the default value of false will be used.