I'm installing tomcat on a CentOS box for use as an application server. My system admin created a tomcat user service account under which to run tomcat. I'm generally following instructions on this page but when I get to the step where I adjust the startup script to  run the tomcat startup and shutdown commands as user tomcat (Step 6, item 4) I'm being asked for a password for the tomcat account. Since this is a service account should I be able to /bin/su tomcat to run certain commands as the tomcat user without entering the password? I'm generally unfamiliar with setting up tomcat to run under a service account. If anyone has best practices for this please let me know.Update: I found a good article covering installing tomcat as a service under a low privilege user here. Following that article I eventually got my installation working.
Running tomcat under tomcat service account in CentOS
centos;not root user;tomcat
If you are not logged in/elevated as root, and are a regular user, you will need to provide the password for another user account.However, you may want to look into sudo to achieve what you are trying accomplish. You will likely need to consult with your sysadmin to properly set you up in the sudoers file in order to grant you the access you require.