Can't get Bootstrap tutorial to work for the life of me

[Jeremy Hicks]

I'm trying to get the Struts2 Bootstrap tutorial to run and can't get the webapp to start at all.

I'm following the instructions here:

http://struts.apache.org/2.x/docs/simple-setup.html

and here:

http://struts.apache.org/2.x/docs/hello-world.html

In my catalina.out I get:

SEVERE: Error filterStart
Oct 23, 2007 2:21:34 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext start
SEVERE: Context [/tutorial] startup failed due to previous errors

and the only previous error I can find is:

SEVERE: Parse Fatal Error at line 1 column 1: Premature end of file.
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Premature end of file.
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.createSAXParseException(ErrorHandlerWrapper.java:195)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.fatalError(ErrorHandlerWrapper.java:174)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(XMLErrorReporter.java:388)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLScanner.reportFatalError(XMLScanner.java:1411)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentScannerImpl$PrologDriver.next(XMLDocumentScannerImpl.java:1037)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentScannerImpl.next(XMLDocumentScannerImpl.java:645)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:508)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:807)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:737)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:107)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(AbstractSAXParser.java:1205)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.SAXParserImpl$JAXPSAXParser.parse(SAXParserImpl.java:522)
    at org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.Digester.parse(Digester.java:1562)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.applicationWebConfig(ContextConfig.java:369)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.start(ContextConfig.java:1062)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.lifecycleEvent(ContextConfig.java:261)
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:117)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:4239)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.checkResources(HostConfig.java:1105)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.check(HostConfig.java:1203)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.lifecycleEvent(HostConfig.java:293)
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:117)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.backgroundProcess(ContainerBase.java:1337)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$ContainerBackgroundProcessor.processChildren(ContainerBase.java:1601)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$ContainerBackgroundProcessor.processChildren(ContainerBase.java:1610)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$ContainerBackgroundProcessor.run(ContainerBase.java:1590)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)
Oct 23, 2007 12:48:55 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig applicationWebConfig
SEVERE: Parse error in application web.xml file at jndi:/localhost/tutorial/WEB-INF/web.xml
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Premature end of file.
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(AbstractSAXParser.java:1231)
    at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.SAXParserImpl$JAXPSAXParser.parse(SAXParserImpl.java:522)
    at org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.Digester.parse(Digester.java:1562)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.applicationWebConfig(ContextConfig.java:369)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.start(ContextConfig.java:1062)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.lifecycleEvent(ContextConfig.java:261)
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:117)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:4239)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.checkResources(HostConfig.java:1105)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.check(HostConfig.java:1203)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.lifecycleEvent(HostConfig.java:293)
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:117)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.backgroundProcess(ContainerBase.java:1337)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$ContainerBackgroundProcessor.processChildren(ContainerBase.java:1601)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$ContainerBackgroundProcessor.processChildren(ContainerBase.java:1610)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$ContainerBackgroundProcessor.run(ContainerBase.java:1590)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)
Oct 23, 2007 12:48:55 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig applicationWebConfig
SEVERE: Occurred at line 1 column 1

I haven't gotten that Exception again, so I'm not totally sure it is related to the first error. I've tried stopping and starting Tomcat and undeploying and redeploying the application and I can only consistently get the first error listed above (Error filterStart). If I remove this:

<filter>
    <filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
    <filter-class>org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.FilterDispatcher</filter-class>
  </filter>
 
  <filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
  </filter-mapping>

from my web.xml, the app starts okay, but it is kind of useless without it.

I've been banging my head on the wall trying to get this to work for a while now. I can deploy the blank.war app that comes with struts and it works fine. My from-scratch app is VERY similar and I can't seem to see what the difference is.

I'm on Ubuntu with Tomcat 6.0.14 with Java 1.6.0.03.

Any ideas?

[Herman Schelti]

hi Jeremy,

can you post the rest of your web.xml?

Herman

[Jeremy Hicks]

Sure thing. Here it is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app id="WebApp_9" version="2.4" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee <a href="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd"></a>
 
    <display-name>Tutorial</display-name>
 
    <filter>
        <filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
        <filter-class>org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.FilterDispatcher</filter-class>
    </filter>
 
    <filter-mapping>
        <filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </filter-mapping>
 
    <welcome-file-list>
        <welcome-file>index.html</welcome-file>
    </welcome-file-list>
 
</web-app>

[Jeremy Hicks]

I figured it out! It had nothing to do with my web.xml.

I had copied over ALL of the jars from the struts lib folder instead of just the five necessary jars.

I went through the extra jars, deleting them one at a time. When I deleted the spring plugin jar (struts2-spring-plugin-2.0.9.jar), everything started working. Is this jar duplicated on the default Java classpath somewhere? I wouldn't think so. Why would this jar being presents cause problems?