When catalina.sh boots, it has commons-logging in the CLASSPATH, but not log4j webapps using log4j (most complex ones) will use different classloaders for both packages, leading to very obscure errors. sgala@marlow ~ $ diff -u /usr/share/tomcat-5/bin/catalina.sh.orig /usr/share/tomcat-5/bin/catalina.sh --- /usr/share/tomcat-5/bin/catalina.sh.orig 2005-03-05 18:14:31.000000000 +0100 +++ /usr/share/tomcat-5/bin/catalina.sh 2005-03-05 18:59:57.081324033 +0100 @@ -108,7 +108,7 @@ if [ -n "$JSSE_HOME" ]; then CLASSPATH="$CLASSPATH":"$JSSE_HOME"/lib/jcert.jar:"$JSSE_HOME"/lib/jnet.jar:"$JSSE_HOME"/lib/jsse.jar fi -CLASSPATH="$CLASSPATH":"$CATALINA_HOME"/bin/bootstrap.jar:"$CATALINA_HOME"/bin/commons-logging-api.jar +CLASSPATH="$CLASSPATH":"$CATALINA_HOME"/bin/bootstrap.jar:`java-config -p commons-logging`:`java-config -p log4j` The above patch will solve it, though I'm not sure if common-logging is needed in the bootstrap phase. If not, removing both can be an alternative solution, and adding commons-logging to /usr/share/tomcat-5/common/lib (to make it available to webapps) Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. emerge tomcat-5.0.28 2. deploy blojsom 3. wait for a obscure error about a log4j class not being available (it is in a different classloader) Actual Results: blojsom refuses to deploy Expected Results: with the above patch, and also removing commons-logging from the patched line, things worked.
Filed upstream: http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=33869
thanks for your report and the patch. i've added log4j to the classpath.
