The solution to my earlier exception was I named the backing bean
incorrectly. funny that I did not get bean not exist error(I think I
remember getting one from JSF before). Anyways in this case I had a
backing bean misnamed in faces-config.xml and I get the very
uninformitive exception of.....(there was nothing in the tomcat logs).
javax.servlet.ServletException: org.apache.jasper.JasperException
javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.service(FacesServlet.java:109)
org.apache.myfaces.component.html.util.ExtensionsFilter.doFilter(ExtensionsFilter.java:122)
*root cause*
javax.faces.FacesException: org.apache.jasper.JasperException
org.apache.myfaces.context.servlet.ServletExternalContextImpl.dispatch(ServletExternalContextImpl.java:425)
org.apache.myfaces.application.jsp.JspViewHandlerImpl.renderView(JspViewHandlerImpl.java:234)
org.apache.myfaces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.render(LifecycleImpl.java:300)
javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.service(FacesServlet.java:95)
org.apache.myfaces.component.html.util.ExtensionsFilter.doFilter(ExtensionsFilter.java:122)
