Error on JSP-examples - Tomcat 5

[Erin O'Neill <eo...@stanford.edu>]

Hello all -
I'm new to tomcat and it is driving me up the wall! I've followed the 
instructions/tutorial to get it up and running. I'm installing tomcat 
5.0.19 on a solaris machine (OS 2.8 with patches), Apache 2.0.48. Java 
is  1.4.2_03-b02. Apache is up and running basic html, perl cgi & php cgi 
scripts.

Due to google and some good websites, I've actually gotten as far as to get 
to the manager page and I've been able to run some of the examples. The 
first basic ones all work (pretty exciting to even get to this point). But 
then things start to fall apart.
1. JSP 2.0 Examples all run (arthimatic ... functions)
2. Simple Tag Handling:
         1. Hello World Tag works.
         2. Repeat tag fails with:
HTTP Status: 500
exception:

javax.servlet.ServletException: _jspx_page_context
         org.apache.jasper.runtime.PageContextImpl.doHandlePageException(PageContextImpl.java:864)
         org.apache.jasper.runtime.PageContextImpl.handlePageException(PageContextImpl.java:800)
         org.apache.jsp.jsp2.tagfiles.panel_jsp._jspService(panel_jsp.java:62)
         org.apache.jasper.runtime.HttpJspBase.service(HttpJspBase.java:133)
         javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:856)


         3. Book Example works fine
3. Tag Files
         1. hello world tag - works fine
         2. Panel tag file - same error as above:
         4. Display Products Example - same error as above.

4. New JSP XML Syntax
         1. XHTML Basic example - same error as above
         2. SVG (didn't test)
5. Other JSP 2.0 Features
         1. <jsp:attribute> and ... - worked
         2. shuffle example - same error as above
         3. attributes with Dynamic names - worked        4. JSP 
configuration - a NEW ERROR:
(background: $CATALINA_HOME, $JAVA_HOME have been set. From googling this 
problem I also set a PATH & a CLASSPATH. the start up script. I followed 
the instructions of copying the
tools.jar from the directory they recommended to the common/lib directory. 
I've stopped and started tomcat. I've rebooted the computer. Nothing seems 
to work. I must have a configuration error??

CLASSPATH=.:/usr/local/tomcat/common/lib:/usr/j2se:/usr/j2se/lib:$JAVA_HOME/lib/tools.jar:/usr/local/tomcat/common/lib/tools.jar:
PATH=/usr/java/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/java/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:

EXCEPTION ERROR FROM TOMCAT:
org.apache.jasper.JasperException: Unable to compile class for JSP

No Java compiler was found to compile the generated source for the JSP.
This can usually be solved by copying manually $JAVA_HOME/lib/tools.jar 
from the JDK
to the common/lib directory of the Tomcat server, followed by a Tomcat 
restart.
If using an alternate Java compiler, please check its installation and 
access path.

         org.apache.jasper.compiler.DefaultErrorHandler.javacError(DefaultErrorHandler.java:127)
         org.apache.jasper.compiler.ErrorDispatcher.javacError(ErrorDispatcher.java:351)
         org.apache.jasper.compiler.Compiler.generateClass(Compiler.java:415)
         org.apache.jasper.compiler.Compiler.compile(Compiler.java:458)
         org.apache.jasper.compiler.Compiler.compile(Compiler.java:439)
         org.apache.jasper.JspCompilationContext.compile(JspCompilationContext.java:552)
         org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:291)
         org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:301)
         org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:248)
         javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:856)

I did the following tutorial to get tomcat 
running:http://volume1.coreservlets.com/Apache-Tomcat-Tutorial.html

Any thoughts on what I may have wrong??

thanks,
erin