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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-06T13:00:27+00:00

I was trying to find out the difference between Apache Tomcat variables – CATALINA_OPTS

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I was trying to find out the difference between Apache Tomcat variables – CATALINA_OPTS and JAVA_OPTS in SO and surprised to see that there is no question/answer posted here yet. So I thought of sharing it here (with answer) after finding out the difference. Check the answer/difference below.

NOTE: At the time of this posting, we’re running Apache Tomcat v6.0.10 with JDK 6u32 on CentOS5 64-bit arch.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    There are two environment variables – CATALINA_OPTS and JAVA_OPTS – which are both used in the catalina.sh startup and shutdown script for Tomcat.

    CATALINA_OPTS: Comment inside catalina.sh:

    #   CATALINA_OPTS   (Optional) Java runtime options used when the "start",
#                   "run" or "debug" command is executed.
#                   Include here and not in JAVA_OPTS all options, that should
#                   only be used by Tomcat itself, not by the stop process,
#                   the version command etc.
#                   Examples are heap size, GC logging, JMX ports etc.

    JAVA_OPTS: Comment inside catalina.sh:

    #   JAVA_OPTS       (Optional) Java runtime options used when any command
#                   is executed.
#                   Include here and not in CATALINA_OPTS all options, that
#                   should be used by Tomcat and also by the stop process,
#                   the version command etc.
#                   Most options should go into CATALINA_OPTS.

    So why are there two different variables? And what’s the difference?

    1. Firstly, anything specified in EITHER variable is passed, identically, to the command that starts up Tomcat – the start or run command – but only values set in JAVA_OPTS are passed to the stop command. That probably doesn’t make any difference to how Tomcat runs in practice as it only effects the END of a run, not the start.

    2. The second difference is more subtle. Other applications may also use JAVA_OPTS, but only Tomcat will use CATALINA_OPTS. So if you’re setting environment variables for use only by Tomcat, you’ll be best advised to use CATALINA_OPTS, whereas if you’re setting environment variables to be used by other java applications as well, such as by JBoss, you should put your settings in JAVA_OPTS.

    Source: CATALINA_OPTS v JAVA_OPTS – What is the difference?

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