I suppose you want to install Tomcat server in a Linux operating system using the binary version downloaded from the web.

Before starting the Tomcat installation it's necessary to install the SDK of Java 2 Platform Standard Edition (J2SE): you can download it from the official Java website.

After that you have to set the environment variable JAVA_HOME with the name of the directory where you have installed the Java SDK.

Now, you can download the binary version of Tomcat from its official web site (http://jakarta.apache.org) and then you have to extract every file present in the archive into a local directory (I'll refer to it with $TOMCAT_HOME).

In order to start Tomcat you have to digit the "./startup.sh" command from the "$TOMCAT_HOME/bin" directory. To stop it you have to digit the "./shutdown.sh" command from the same directory.