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Can't get my web applications to deploy to Tomcat [message #882532]

Wed, 06 June 2012 16:53

Rob Tanner

Messages: 20
Registered: July 2009

Junior Member

Hi,

My webapps are not deploying to Tomcat. At first, I thought I was doing something wrong since I haven't worked on a web application in quite sometime and maybe I was missing a step. But, after doing a bunch of googling, I've concluded that there's nothing I'm doing that's wrong and the app should deploy to my test server. It simply is not working though it used to. Also my laptop also isn't working, but it used to. And to top it all off, it thinks it's working. With Tomcat running, when I modify a piece of code within Eclipse and save it, I see this message in the Eclipse console view:

Jun 5, 2012 5:47:58 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext reload
INFO: Reloading Context with name [/AccountManager] has started

Yet, when I look in the webapps folder in the running Tomcat server, there is no evidence that the webapp was ever deployed.

The next thing I checked was the logfile (.metadata/.log in the root of the workspace looking for a possible stacktrace. I found no errors reported of stacktraces.

So that leads me to conclude that some plugin installed recently effectively breaks Eclipse's ability to deploy a webapp to the server. I'm running Eclipse Java EE IDE for Web Developers, version: Indigo Service Release 2. I have SpringSource, Maven (m2e), AspectJ, VMWare and a host of others that are added beyond the actual distro version of Eclipse.

Does anyone know of any plugins that could cause the symptoms I'm seeing? Or, barring that, is there a simple way that I can figure the order in which I installed the various plugins so that I can back them out one at a time starting with the most recent?

Thanks,

Rob Tanner
Linfield College

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Re: Can't get my web applications to deploy to Tomcat [message #882549 is a reply to message #882532]

Wed, 06 June 2012 17:45

Larry Isaacs

Messages: 1354
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

For info about the Tomcat support in WTP see the Tomcat FAQ[1]. It will
explain why not seeing your deployed webapp in the "webapps" folder is
normal. Seeing the "Reloading Context" message shows that Tomcat is
running and your "/AccountManager" webapp is deployed (though not in the
way you currently expect). So at this point, it's not clear what
exactly isn't working.

Cheers,
Larry

[1] http://wiki.eclipse.org/WTP_Tomcat_FAQ

On 6/6/2012 12:53 PM, Rob Tanner wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My webapps are not deploying to Tomcat. At first, I thought I was doing
> something wrong since I haven't worked on a web application in quite
> sometime and maybe I was missing a step. But, after doing a bunch of
> googling, I've concluded that there's nothing I'm doing that's wrong and
> the app should deploy to my test server. It simply is not working though
> it used to. Also my laptop also isn't working, but it used to. And to
> top it all off, it thinks it's working. With Tomcat running, when I
> modify a piece of code within Eclipse and save it, I see this message in
> the Eclipse console view:
>
> Jun 5, 2012 5:47:58 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext reload
> INFO: Reloading Context with name [/AccountManager] has started
>
> Yet, when I look in the webapps folder in the running Tomcat server,
> there is no evidence that the webapp was ever deployed.
>
> The next thing I checked was the logfile (.metadata/.log in the root of
> the workspace looking for a possible stacktrace. I found no errors
> reported of stacktraces.
>
> So that leads me to conclude that some plugin installed recently
> effectively breaks Eclipse's ability to deploy a webapp to the server.
> I'm running Eclipse Java EE IDE for Web Developers, version: Indigo
> Service Release 2. I have SpringSource, Maven (m2e), AspectJ, VMWare and
> a host of others that are added beyond the actual distro version of
> Eclipse.
>
> Does anyone know of any plugins that could cause the symptoms I'm
> seeing? Or, barring that, is there a simple way that I can figure the
> order in which I installed the various plugins so that I can back them
> out one at a time starting with the most recent?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rob Tanner
> Linfield College

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Re: Can't get my web applications to deploy to Tomcat [message #882665 is a reply to message #882549]

Thu, 07 June 2012 00:04

Rob Tanner

Messages: 20
Registered: July 2009

Junior Member

That's interesting because as recently as January/February, when I did my last set of major updates to a dynamic web project, the project was automatically deployed to Tomcat's webapps folder, but I'm game for a better alternative. I checked out the FAQ and then double clicked on the Tomcat server within the Servers view to get the config, but everything under Server Locations is greyed out and so I can't touch it. there's a greyed-out server path of .metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.wst.server.core/tmp0. There is a webapps directory, but it's empty and a wtpwebapps directory that contains the directory ROOT and in ROOT, there's just a web.xml file.

What do I need to do to enable the Server Locations section so I can make changes to try and figure out what's going on?

Thanks,
Rob

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Re: Can't get my web applications to deploy to Tomcat [message #882918 is a reply to message #882665]

Thu, 07 June 2012 13:17

Larry Isaacs

Messages: 1354
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

On 6/6/2012 8:04 PM, Rob Tanner wrote:
> That's interesting because as recently as January/February, when I did
> my last set of major updates to a dynamic web project, the project was
> automatically deployed to Tomcat's webapps folder, but I'm game for a
> better alternative. I checked out the FAQ and then double clicked on the
> Tomcat server within the Servers view to get the config, but everything
> under Server Locations is greyed out and so I can't touch it. there's a
> greyed-out server path of
> .metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.wst.server.core/tmp0. There is a webapps
> directory, but it's empty and a wtpwebapps directory that contains the
> directory ROOT and in ROOT, there's just a web.xml file.
>
> What do I need to do to enable the Server Locations section so I can
> make changes to try and figure out what's going on?
>
> Thanks,
> Rob

As stated at the top of the Server Location section, "Server must be
published with no modules present to make changes." If you remove all
modules/projects from the server and publish the server, then the
settings in this section can be changed. It wasn't practical to allow
changes while modules/projects were published on the server. Note that
adding and removing modules/projects doesn't effect the Tomcat server
itself until you publish the server with those changes.

If you have a module/project deployed to the Tomcat server and you don't
see a corresponding folder under "wtpwebapps", then it would seem to
imply that the "Serve modules without publishing" option is enabled.
When enabled, Tomcat is "customized" to serve resources directly from
their project folders in the workspace so publishing is not necessary.
It works fine in most cases, but doesn't duplicate published webapp
behavior 100%.

Cheers,
Larry

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