Hi all,
I'm seeing behavior that seems contrary to the TC Documentation (seems to happen a lot).
I'm running TC 5.0.9 on Win 2k, J2SDK 1.4.2_01.
I have some JAR files (for JavaMail) in the $CATALINA_HOME/shared/lib directory. I expect my web app will be able to use classes out of these JARs with no problem. Unfortunately, I get a NoClassDefFoundError when refering to classes in these JARs.
If I move the JAR files to the $CATALINA_HOME/common/lib directory, however, the classes are found with no problem.
The classes are found it both cases. It is just that in the case of common/lib, it is finding the one it expects to find. Keep in mind that NoClassDefFoundError is *not* the same as ClassNotFoundException. The former means that the class was found, but it wasn't the version it expected where the latter means that the class literally was not found. NoClassDefFoundError might also be caused by the class being found, but having been loaded by a different classloader. Not positive about that one, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
Basically, I'd look for another jar containing the JavaMail api somewhere in your classpath other than the one you put in shared/lib (make sure to check JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/ext and your webapp's WEB-INF/lib). If you can't find another jar, then it is probably a classloader issue where the container requires the javamail api. Note that server/lib can see common/lib (but not vice-versa), common/lib can see shared/lib (and vice-versa is also true in this case), but server/lib *cannot* see shared/lib (and vice-versa).
According the (often innacurate) Tomcat documention, the $CATALINA_HOME/shared/lib should be searched.
It is, but as I stated above, there are class loader visibility issues to consider and JavaMail may very well have to go in common/lib in order to work properly in Tomcat.
See: http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-5.0-doc/class-loader-howto.html
Does anyone have an explanation for why $CATALINA_HOME/shared/lib is not being searched?
It is, see above.
And just what the heck is the difference between $CATALINA_HOME/shared/lib vs. $CATALINA_HOME/common/lib??
Read what I said above about class loader visibility. shared/lib is meant for libraries you want to make available to all of your webapps but not the container. Stuff that will be also used by the container should not be placed here, but in common/lib which both the container and your webapps can see.
<angry-gripe> The TC documentation refers to a directory, "$CATALINA_HOME/lib" and says that the following JARs are located there: jasper-compiler.jar, jasper-runtime.jar and naming-factory.jar. This is just another example of the shoddy TC documentation. These JAR files are all located in "$CATALINA_HOME/common/lib". In fact, "$CATALINA_HOME/lib" doesn't even exist! </angry-gripe>
Supply a patch to the docs and submit it as a bug in bugzilla to the Tomcat project.
http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/
A committer can take that and apply it to the CVS source. And CATALINA_HOME/lib used to be the case in Tomcat4.0.x. It changed in Tomcat-4.1.x and has stayed this way in Tomcat-5.0.x. Sometimes docs get stale and it is up to the community (that's you) to report such things and help out where you can if you see something that is inadequate.
Jake
Thanks!
Tony
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