3.2.3.5  Starting and Stopping Tomcat 

Once you have successfully built the application, you can run it in the servlet engine. The 

command to start Tomcat is simply: 

$ $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/startup.sh

You should receive messages indicating the start up process, similar to this: 

Using classpath:/usr/local/jakarta tomcat 3.2.1/lib/ant.jar:

/usr/local/jakarta tomcat 3.2.1/lib/jasper.jar:

/usr/local/jakarta tomcat 3.2.1/lib/jaxp.jar:

/usr/local/jakarta tomcat 3.2.1/lib/parser.jar:

/usr/local/jakarta tomcat 3.2.1/lib/servlet.jar:

/usr/local/jakarta tomcat 3.2.1/lib/test:

/usr/local/jakarta tomcat3.2.1/lib/webserver.jar:

/usr/java/jdk1.3/lib/tools.jar:

/usr/local/jakarta tomcat 3.2.1/webapps/ROOT/WEB INF/classes:

2001 05 01 12:10:39   ContextManager: Adding context Ctx( /examples )

2001 05 01 12:10:40   ContextManager: Adding context Ctx( /admin )

2001 05 01 12:10:40   ContextManager: Adding context Ctx( /myApp )

cannot load servlet name: controller

2001 05 01

12:10:42

PoolTcpConnector:

Starting

HttpConnectionHandler

on

8080

Tomcat is pre configured to listen and respond to HTTP requests at port 8080. You can verify 

this at the start up, as shown above (last line). There should also be a line indicating that your 

application context was loaded (other bold line). 

Don't worry about the message  cannot load servlet name: controller , which you will probably 

get. This is a servlet defined in the web.xml file, but there is actually no class provided for it in 

our example application; therefore, it cannot be loaded, of course. You can clean up web.xml 

and remove this servlet, as well as any other definitions not required later on. 

Any time that you modify the web.xml file (by adding a new servlet, for example), Tomcat has to 

be restarted so it reloads the Web Application Deployment Descriptor web.xml (However, you 

don't have to restart Tomcat when adding JSP pages or HTML pages, since they do not require 

a modification of web.xml). Before running the start up script again, you have to shut Tomcat 

down properly, or Tomcat will not restart. To do this, use the command: 

$ $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh

When continuously changing and deploying the application, you may wish to write a batch script 

that stops and restarts Tomcat with a single command.  

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