All, First of all, I apologize for the question on "catalina.out" being empty in v7.0.23. That's because I am using log4j for Tomcat logging, and the level was set to "ERROR".
Here is an interesting finding between v7.0.23 and v7.0.52. It appears that a 3 second delay occurs in v7.0.52 as the debug logs show below for context, "lsa": -------------start of v7.0.23 debug log snippet:------- [2014-04-04 14:55:37,661][DEBUG] org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase - Setting state for [WebappLoader[/lsa]] to [STARTED] [2014-04-04 14:55:37,662][DEBUG] org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig - Context [/lsa] will parse web.xml and web-fragment.xml files with validation:false and namespaceAware:false [2014-04-04 14:55:37,682][DEBUG] org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase - Setting state for [StandardEngine[Catalina].StandardHost[localhost].StandardContext[/lsa].StandardWrapper[jsp]] to [INITIALIZING] -------------end of v7.0.23 debug log snippet--------- ------------start of v7.0.52 debug log snippet:------- [2014-04-04 16:37:09,525][DEBUG] org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase - Setting state for [WebappLoader[/lsa]] to [STARTED] [2014-04-04 16:37:09,526][DEBUG] org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig - Context [/lsa] will parse web.xml and web-fragment.xml files with validation:false and namespaceAware:false [2014-04-04 16:37:12,043][DEBUG] org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase - Setting state for [StandardEngine[Catalina].StandardHost[localhost].StandardContext[/lsa].StandardWrapper[jsp]] to [INITIALIZING] --------------end of v7.0.52 debug log snippet------ So why is there such a delay in initializing a context between the two versions? I have noticed delays of up to 6 or 7 seconds in configuring a context in v7.0.52. Thanks, -Shanti