This guideline will explain where to download and how to install GeoServer.
The information is for Windows computers or laptops. If you use a Mac or Linux it should work the same way, but in case of problems contact the supervisors.
The latest stable release of GeoServer is version 2.27.0
Visit: http://geoserver.org/release/stable/ and choose as installation package the “Web Archive (war)” package.
Click on “Web Archive” to download (the name of the file will be: geoserver-2.27.0-war.zip).
Note: The download can take a while, because it is quite large (~100 MB).
When the file is completely downloaded: unzip it and move the file geoserver.war to the folder geo1007/apache-tomcat-<version>/webapps, so you will have added the following to the /webapps directory:
...
geo1007/apache-tomcat-<version>/webapps/geoserver.war
Start the Apache Tomcat web server (installed for lab1), with
bin/startup.bat on Windows, and ./catalina.sh run or bin/startup.sh on
Linux and Mac.
Because the geoserver.war file is in the webapps directory, Apache Tomcat will automatically ‘deploy’ GeoServer as a web application.
You can see this deployment process happen in Tomcat’s command line window: A number of extra messages should show up, until the message ‘Server startup in … ms’ appears.
💡 MacOS Note
You won’t see any output in your terminal if you just run
startup.sh, but can confirm GeoServer has been deployed from the Tomcat admin panel. Running./catalina.sh runruns Apache in the foreground.
As a directly visible result of the deployment of GeoServer you will now have a new folder in the /webapps directory: geo1007/apache-tomcat-<version>/webapps/geoserver/
To test whether the installation of GeoServer was successful: in your web browser go to http://localhost:8080/geoserver
You should see a webpage similar to the following:

This is the ‘Web Administration Interface’ of GeoServer that lets you create OGC web services, such as WMS (Web Map Service) and WFS (Web Feature Service).
💡 Tip
If you do not see such an image:
- Check if your Apache Tomcat server is running
- Check the admin panel to see if GeoServer is deployed
💡 Tip
You can login with the default username and password, which are:
- Username:
admin- Password:
geoserver
