Deployment troubleshooting¶

What versions of Java and Tomcat do I need?¶

I think either 6 or 7 would do (in both cases) but we tested with Java 7 and Tomcat 7.

Can't find servlet-api.jar¶

This should appear in a Tomcat installation directory -- you need to make sure you build the webapp against the same version of the servlet API as you will be deploying it against (i.e the same Tomcat installation).

Sometimes this file is installed with a different name, e.g. on Ubuntu you may find it in /usr/share/java/tomcat-servlet-api-3.0.jar. You should rename it when you copy it.

Tomcat manager URL asks for username and password, but I don't know what they are¶

The default roles are set up in a Tomcat config file, something like /etc/tomcat7/tomcat-users.xml. If no user is defined with the manager-gui role, you will need to add one, e.g. by adding to the middle of the file:

 <role rolename="manager-gui"/>
 <role rolename="manager-script"/>
 <user username="admin" password="admin" roles="manager-gui,manager-script"/>

But note that you should give the role a sensible password, not just admin.

Tomcat manager refuses to start application¶

Showing a message such as

FAIL - Application at context path /echoapp could not be started

with very little extra information. Try searching the Tomcat log (catalina.out) for the text "Unsupported major.minor version" -- if you see this, then that means your application was compiled with a newer version of Java than the one Tomcat is using. Best to make sure you have only one version of Java (6 or 7) installed.