HIDEN.org

Installing Tomcat from Ubuntu’s repository is a snap.

sudo apt-get install tomcat5.5

will do the job.
The only drawback is that when deploying .war files you’ll receive a error message when you call that application. The reason is that Ubuntu installs Tomcat with the security manager activated by default. If you use Tomcat only on a local installation then it’s perfectly safe to disable the security manager.

Edit the file /etc/default/tomcat5.5 and at the end of this file replace

TOMCAT_SECURITY=YES
with
TOMCAT_SECURITY=NO