Tomcat6 won't start on Windows and Java6

Question

I just downloaded a fresh copy of Tomcat6 to install on a development server. The server is running Win2k3 SP2 and Java6.

When I go to start Tomcat6 it reports the following:

D:\>d:\tomcat\bin\tomcat6.exe //TS/Tomcat6
[2009-07-14 15:26:38] [427  prunsrv.c] [error] The operation completed successfully.
[2009-07-14 15:26:38] [1336 prunsrv.c] [error] Load configuration failed

It seems like Tomcat is having config issues, but I'm not sure where to start looking. It's a bit surprising that Tomcat had this problem right out of the box. Is there any compatability problem between Java6 and Tomcat6? Why might the default config be failing?

Answer 1

Just curious if your CATALINA_HOME and JAVA_HOME set? Those environment variables are prerequisite to run Tomcat. Go to Start-->My Computer (right click on it) -->Properties-->Advanced-->Environment Variables (button) and then set CATALINA_HOME to the path of your Tomcat and JAVA_HOME to the location of your JDK, also add JAVA_HOME\bin to your PATH variable.

Answer 2

What would the //TS/Tomcat6 argument do?

The simplest way to make this work outside an IDE is to install it as a Windows Service and us the Monitor TOmcat application to stop and start it.

Answer 3

Ok, Solved this one myself. It turns out that "Load configuration failed" was a red herring. This was caused by Tomcat being unable to load java. I discovered this in $CATALINA_HOME\logs\jakarta_service_YYYMMDD.log.

I solved the problem by following these instructions. Which basically amounts to copying msvcr71.dll to c:\windows\system32