Tomcat 5.5.12 common/lib jars and classpath

[Brad O'Hearne <br...@neurofire.com>]

I just configured a JAASRealm and a login module for it that authenticates 
users. I've gotten that to work just fine. But in the process I discovered 
something very strange. My loging module relies on mail.jar, the JavaMail 
API. I put my login module and its dependency jars into the common/lib 
directory to be loaded there, but I was getting NoSuchProviderException when 
trying to create a store using the "imap" protocol. I know for a fact my 
mail.jar was being loaded, because Tomcat found and executed classes 
successfully which were contained within the mail.jar. After spending hours 
with logs and API docs, I finally just put mail.jar on Tomcat's classpath, 
and it resolved the problem. Stranger still, all worked fine without putting 
mail.jar in the classpath in Tomcat 5.0.28. 

Can anyone shed light on why putting this Jar on the literal Tomcat classpath 
would have a different effect than putting jars into common/lib? I am 
guessing that this has something to do with other resources (property files 
and the like) which might be contained in the jar. The reason this is a 
concern for me, is that it leads me to believe that there's no point in 
placing jars into any of the directories governed by Tomcat's classloader 
hierarchy, but rather that I ought to place all jars on the classpath? 

Help!  I need to get to the bottom of this problem!

Brad


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@tomcat.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@tomcat.apache.org