manual tomcat install versus apt

[Thufir]

I installed tomcat per fine following:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/linux/installing-tomcat-6-on-ubuntu/

However, I wanted to use Netbeans to automagically run web app's, so 
filled in the server info as per:

thufir at arrakis:~$ 
thufir at arrakis:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat start
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /usr/local/tomcat
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /usr/local/tomcat
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /usr/local/tomcat/temp
Using JRE_HOME:       /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun
thufir at arrakis:~$ 

Which gave Netbeans errors until ran chown recursively on usr/local/
tomcat (and then changed back to root:root later on).  I think that I 
tried something similar when I tried installing from apt and it didn't 
work.

 why don't the apt-get commands at:

https://help.ubuntu.com/8.10/serverguide/C/tomcat.html

script the install process which the howtogeek site lays out?  Is there a 
security concern which the help.ubuntu.com directions are trying to 
address?

When I followed the help.ubuntu.com directions I got hung up on the path 
for CATALINA_HOME and couldn't get past a Netbeans error that:

<CATALINA_HOME>/conf/server.xml is corrupt.

which I was able to work around from the howtogeek directions by 
temporarily changing the ownership of /usr/local/tomcat to non-root 
(probably a bad idea, I changed it back to root:root).

Maybe it's more of a Netbeans prob, not sure.


-Thufir