Apache Tomcat 6 – .WAR won’t deploy

We run a Java application here that is published through Apache Tomcat running on Windows. The production version is Apache Tomcat 5.5.1.17 running on Windows Server 2003 with all updates applied. I’m currently carrying out some testing so that we can migrate this particular server to Windows 2008 shortly but the .WAR files wouldn’t deploy. Here’s how to configure everything properly.

Here’s what the test server is running now that everything is working:

- Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition x86 with UAC *disabled*
- SQL Server 2008 Express with Advanced Services
- Apache Tomcat 6.0.18 (including tc-native).
- JRE 6 Update 12
- Set the webapps to be reloadable (in context.xml change to be ).

With all that installed I enabled the invoker servlet in web.xml but the .WAR application wouldn’t deploy properly. The “Message:” section at the top said OK and the files were copied to the webapps folder but the application didn’t appear in the list of installed applications.

I couldn’t figure out why and I tried everything I could initially think of, including downgrading to Apache Tomcat 5.5.17 and JRE 5 Update 17. Nothing worked.

I eventually tracked the problem down to the invoker servlet mapping not being enabled in the web.xml – this is something that’s required for the invoker servlet to work properly.

The application now works perfectly – problem solved!