how to debug a tomcat application not starting

Question

I am creating a brand new box with centos / tomcat 6 / jdk 6

I am deploying an exploded war (long story.....)

To do that i create a ROOT.xml in

/opt/java/apache-tomcat-6.0.37/conf/Catalina/localhost

 <Context path=""
             docBase="/home/myapp"
             crossContext="true"
             allowLinking="true"
             debug="0"
             reloadable="false" >

i have a in /home/myapp/WEB-INF and in /home/myapp/WEB-INF/web.xml and all the other associated files. This dir structure is from a working box.

when i start tomcat i tailf catalina.out amd see

INFO: Deploying configuration descriptor ROOT.xml
Dec 10, 2013 10:04:25 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployDescriptor

usually as ROOT deploys I see alot more info

and when i try to go to http://myhost.com:8080 i get a 404

but i get nothing in the log files, so i am looking for a suggestion on how to add more debug to see whats going on.

I also tried setting debug=9 and got no more info

     <Context path=""
             docBase="/home/unitnet"
             crossContext="true"
             allowLinking="true"
             debug="9"
             reloadable="false" >

Thanks for any help

Answer 1

i found a way to make tomcat log file more verbose and it led me to fix my problem i edited $CATALINA_HOME/conf/logging.properties and un-commented these lines (very very verbose)::

org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.level = FINE

org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.level = FINE

org.apache.catalina.level = FINE