there are various ways to check if your tomcat server is running fine,the simplest among them is to point to the http://<server>:<port> by default http://localhost:8080 and check if you can connect to it.if you’ve not set up any customized page you’ll get tomcat default page by this step.

another way is to telnet the server and check if it responds
telnet hostname port
get /HTTP /1.0
if you know the machine where tomcat is running and want to check if the tomcat process is running fine,you can check following steps:
1: if tomcat is the only java process running on the server
tompro=’ps -ef | grep java | grep -v grep | wc -l’
if[$tompro>0]; then
echo “one java process there I guess its tomcat!”;
fi
2: if only one tomcat is running on the server
tompro=’ps ax -width=1000 | grep “[o]rg.catalina.startup.Bootstrap start” | awk ‘{print $1 ” “}’ | wc | awk ‘{print $2}’
if[$tompro -gt 0];then
echo “one tomcat is running I guess its one you are looking for!”
fi
3: if multiple tomcat running on the server
for most versions:
ps aux | grep -i tomcat
you should see java process running with java class org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap
if you are sure of the port which your tomcat is running on (this can be checked in server.xml)
assuming port is 8080 which is the default tomcat port
netstat -tupan | grep 8080
one more way to find out is to run
ps axf | grep [j]ava.endorsed.dir
June 26, 2009 at 1:45 am
What about telnet-ing to the port?
July 4, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Thanks Righteous,
yes that’s also a good option,I think it should be one of the first one along with checking through browser.updated the post.