Exception while stating up tomcat

[Satya Maheshwari]

Hi
I get the following exception when starting up tomcat after I have may WAR in the webapps folder. Nothing looks wrong with web.xml

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:1414)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentScannerImpl$PrologDriver.next(XMLDocumentScannerImpl.java:1059)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentScannerImpl.next(XMLDocumentScannerImpl.java:648)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:511)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:808)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:737)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:119)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(AbstractSAXParser.java:1205)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.SAXParserImpl$JAXPSAXParser.parse(SAXParserImpl.java:522)
at org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.Digester.parse(Digester.java:1626)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR(HostConfig.java:873)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWARs(HostConfig.java:740)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployApps(HostConfig.java:500)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.start(HostConfig.java:1277)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.lifecycleEvent(HostConfig.java:321)
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:119)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1053)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.start(StandardHost.java:785)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1045)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine.start(StandardEngine.java:445)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.start(StandardService.java:519)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer.start(StandardServer.java:710)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start(Catalina.java:581)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.start(Bootstrap.java:289)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:414)
Oct 22, 2010 3:47:02 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployWAR
SEVERE: Error deploying web application archive WebApp.war
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:1626)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR(HostConfig.java:873)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWARs(HostConfig.java:740)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployApps(HostConfig.java:500)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.start(HostConfig.java:1277)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.lifecycleEvent(HostConfig.java:321)
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:119)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1053)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.start(StandardHost.java:785)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1045)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine.start(StandardEngine.java:445)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.start(StandardService.java:519)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer.start(StandardServer.java:710)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start(Catalina.java:581)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.start(Bootstrap.java:289)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:414)

[Christophe Verré]

In WebApp.war, check that your xml files (web.xml ?) are correctly formed.

[Tim Holloway]

Christophe Verré wrote:In WebApp.war, check that your xml files (web.xml ?) are correctly formed.

Most likely you have an unmatched quote in an attribute somewhere, although unclosed elements can also result in errors;

[Satya Maheshwari]

Thanks for you feedback!!

After much head banging I was able to find the culprit. It was <WebAppName>.xml sitting in the conf/catalina/localhost/ directory. The problem with finding it out was because, once I used to have context.xml in META-INF which resulted in its creation. LAter I discontinued the use of context.xml but this file continued to remain there, making itself untracable, yet causing the problem.

[Tim Holloway]

The worst of it is - Tomcat will also DELETE a perfectly good Webappname.xml from the conf directory if it couldn't deploy the app.

Got you coming and going.