How to resolve Error listenerStart when deploying web-app in Tomcat 5.5?

Question

Hi there.

I've deployed an Apache Wicket web-application that uses Spring and Hibernate to my Tomcat 5.5 instance. When I navigate to the Tomcat Manager interface I see that the web-application I deployed is not running. When I press 'Start' I get the following error message; "FAIL - Application at context path /spaghetti could not be started".

My catalina.log contains the following:

Apr 15, 2010 1:51:22 AM org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader validateJarFile
INFO: validateJarFile(/var/lib/tomcat5.5/webapps/spaghetti/WEB-INF/lib/jsp-api-6.0.16.jar) - jar not loaded. See Servlet Spec 2.3, section 9.7.2. Offending class: javax/servlet/jsp/JspPage.class
Apr 15, 2010 1:51:22 AM org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader validateJarFile
INFO: validateJarFile(/var/lib/tomcat5.5/webapps/spaghetti/WEB-INF/lib/servlet-api-6.0.16.jar) - jar not loaded. See Servlet Spec 2.3, section 9.7.2. Offending class: javax/servlet/Servlet.class
Apr 15, 2010 1:51:24 AM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext start
SEVERE: Error listenerStart
Apr 15, 2010 1:51:24 AM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext start
SEVERE: Context [/spaghetti] startup failed due to previous errors

Excerpt from web.xml:

    <listener>
        <listener-class>
            org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
        </listener-class>
    </listener>

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

/var/lib/tomcat5.5/webapps/spaghetti/WEB-INF/lib/jsp-api-6.0.16.jar
/var/lib/tomcat5.5/webapps/spaghetti/WEB-INF/lib/servlet-api-6.0.16.jar

You should not have any server-specific libraries in the /WEB-INF/lib. Leave them in the appserver's own library. It would only lead to collisions in the classpath. Get rid of all appserver-specific libraries in /WEB-INF/lib (and also in JRE/lib and JRE/lib/ext if you have placed any of them there).

A common cause that the appserver-specific libraries are included in the webapp's library is that starters think that it is the right way to fix compilation errors of under each the javax.servlet classes not being resolveable. Putting them in webapp's library is the wrong solution. You should reference them in the classpath during compilation, i.e. javac -cp /path/to/server/lib/servlet.jar and so on, or if you're using an IDE, you should integrate the server in the IDE and associate the web project with the server. The IDE will then automatically take server-specific libraries in the classpath (buildpath) of the webapp project.