startup.bat is overwritting tomcat-users.xml

[Matthew Snow]

I'm using apache-tomcat-5.5.26. I'm trying to add a new user with manager role, but each time I run startup.bat tomcat overwrites the tomcat-users.xml with this:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<tomcat-users>
  <role rolename="tomcat"/>
  <role rolename="role1"/>
  <user username="tomcat" password="tomcat" roles="tomcat"/>
  <user username="role1" password="tomcat" roles="role1"/>
  <user username="both" password="tomcat" roles="tomcat,role1"/>
</tomcat-users>

[William Brogden]

Tomcat does rewrite the users xml file every time it starts but normally that includes my modifications - do you suppose your modified xml has a syntax error?

How about possible parsing errors - anything in the logs?

Bill

[Matthew Snow]

It overwrites it even with the out-of-box version. Here is what it has originally:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!--
  Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
  contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
  this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
  The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
  (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
  the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 
      <a href="http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0</a>
 
  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
  limitations under the License.
-->
<!--
  NOTE:  By default, no user is included in the "manager" role required
  to operate the "/manager" web application.  If you wish to use this app,
  you must define such a user - the username and password are arbitrary.
-->
<tomcat-users>
  <user name="tomcat" password="tomcat" roles="tomcat" />
  <user name="role1"  password="tomcat" roles="role1"  />
  <user name="both"   password="tomcat" roles="tomcat,role1" />
</tomcat-users>

[Matthew Snow]

Here is my catalina log:

Mar 17, 2008 3:04:00 PM org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener lifecycleEvent
INFO: The Apache Tomcat Native library which allows optimal performance in production 
environments was not found on the java.library.path: D:\Java\jdk1.5.0_12\bin;.;
C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;D:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_2\bin;C:\WINDOWS\system32;
C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\Program Files\ATI Technologies\ATI Control Panel;
C:\WINDOWS\system32\nls;C:\WINDOWS\system32\nls\ENGLISH;
C:\Program Files\Common Files\LaserFiche\System;
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adaptec Shared\System;
C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\bin;D:\GTK\2.0\bin;D:\GIMP\GTK\bin;
C:\Program Files\Altiris\Software Virtualization Agent\;
D:\maven-2.0.4\bin;D:\Java\jdk1.5.0_10\bin;D:\QuickTime\QTSystem\;
C:\Training\apache-ant-1.7.0\bin;Z:.;Y:.
Mar 17, 2008 3:04:01 PM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11BaseProtocol init
INFO: Initializing Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-8080
Mar 17, 2008 3:04:01 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina load
INFO: Initialization processed in 797 ms
Mar 17, 2008 3:04:01 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService start
INFO: Starting service Catalina
Mar 17, 2008 3:04:01 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine start
INFO: Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/5.5.26
Mar 17, 2008 3:04:01 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost start
INFO: XML validation disabled
Mar 17, 2008 3:04:04 PM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11BaseProtocol start
INFO: Starting Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-8080
Mar 17, 2008 3:04:04 PM org.apache.jk.common.ChannelSocket init
INFO: JK: ajp13 listening on /0.0.0.0:8009
Mar 17, 2008 3:04:04 PM org.apache.jk.server.JkMain start
INFO: Jk running ID=0 time=0/31  config=null
Mar 17, 2008 3:04:04 PM org.apache.catalina.storeconfig.StoreLoader load
INFO: Find registry server-registry.xml at classpath resource
Mar 17, 2008 3:04:04 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina start
INFO: Server startup in 3625 ms
Mar 17, 2008 3:05:46 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService stop
INFO: Stopping service Catalina
Mar 17, 2008 3:05:46 PM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11BaseProtocol destroy
INFO: Stopping Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-8080
Mar 17, 2008 3:05:46 PM org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener lifecycleEvent
INFO: Failed shutdown of Apache Portable Runtime

[ March 17, 2008: Message edited by: Matthew Snow ]
[ March 17, 2008: Message edited by: Matthew Snow ]

[Matthew Snow]

Solved it. I had only extracted the core (apache-tomcat-5.5.26.zip). I extracted the admin package (apache-tomcat-5.5.26-admin.zip) on top of that and now it is keeping my changes.

[Benson Fung]

Hi Matthew,

I also has the same problem with Tomcat 6.0.16. But I can't find any admin package. Can you be more specific?


Thanks
Benson

[Dave Mulligan]

I had a similar, but different problem with Tomcat 6. Each time it started it would create a new tomcat-users.xml file with no content between the <tomcat-users> and the </tomcat-users> tag. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth and I spotted that all the content that I *thought* was in there was in fact commented out in the default file.

Ho hum. Hope this saves someone some time.