tomcat 4.0.1 & shortname(non-8.3) CATALINA_HOME

["David C. Hochrein" <ho...@mail.msen.com>]

Hello All,

I'm seeing some odd behavior with Tomcat 4.0.1 on NT/2k and installation
directories containing anything greater than 8.3 naming.

I'd like to know if anyone else has seen this or if perhaps this is a known
issue.

I originally noticed this problem because the examples & manager webapps
would always result in 404 errors whenever Tomcat 4.0.1 was installed into a
non-8.3 directory (ie any directory that has a corresponding short name with
~. with or without spaces -- doesn't matter). Everything else worked
great -- my application was working just fine.

In tracking this down, I found the following entry in the log files:

> 2001-12-05 18:22:44 ContextConfig[/manager]: Missing application web.xml,
> using defaults only
> ...
> 2001-12-05 18:23:17 ContextConfig[/examples]: Missing application web.xml,
> using defaults only

And, after some testing, I found that the non-8.3 installation directory was
causing the problem. So, I assumed that a longname was being used somewhere
that it shouldn't be and went about tracking it down. I intended to then
convert it to the short name and all would be well.

Unfortunately, I found that short names were being used correctly everywhere
and the problem still existed.

At this point, I've boiled this down to the following test case(s).

1. Take a 4.0.1 binary release (zip file). Copy the contents to
"C:\123456789". Setup CATALINA_HOME to it's shortname version: (probably
"C:\123456~1"). Run bin\startup.bat. Notice the 404 errors for the examples
& manager webapps. Run bin\shutdown.bat to stop Tomcat.

2. Now, copy the 4.0.1 binary release to "C:\12345678". Setup CATALINA HOME
again (it can now be just "C:\12345678"). Run the bin\startup.bat again.
Now, notice that the examples & manager webapps work just fine.

Very strange. It seems as though shortname versions (including ~) of
longnames for the installation directory *cannot* be used for CATALINA_HOME
because Tomcat 4.0.1 doesn't like it. (In fact, if you set CATALINA_HOME to
the full "C:\123456789" path for the first case, this also resolves the
issue.)

Finally, I grabbed a nightly build from 12/7 and this problem no longer
appears to exist on the development codebase. So, it looks like this was a
known issue that has been resolved or perhaps it's resolution is a side
effect of some other changes.

The problem I still have is that my configuration code converts everything
to shortnames (which is usually the proper thing to do). But, in this case,
it is causing Tomcat to fail. I guess I can use the longname for
CATALINA_HOME -- it just seems a strange thing to have to do.

Anyone else see this or have any thoughts?

Dave




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