Tomcat 7 “SEVERE: A child container failed during start”

Question

Basically, I\'ve written a springMVC application (with a relatively shotgun my way first-timer approach with regards to Spring). The project works fine on Tomc

Answer 1

Don't panic. You have you copied the servlet code? Ok,

@WebServlet("/HelloWord")
public class HelloWorld extends HttpServlet {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

You gave the same path @WebServlet("/HelloWord") for both servlets with different names.

If you create a web.xml file, then check the classpath.

Answer 2

If you are thinking that previously it was running properly and now on it started showing the particular issue. Then it is just a hit and trial method to solve. so to get better solution you could follow below steps

1. remove your existing tomcat, if possible
2. remove your project and add your project with a new build
3. add your tomcat server
4. clean the project and refresh the project
5. go for running or debug mode

Answer 3

I have the same problem a few months ago. This solve my problem using Maven instead of a downloaded version of Spring and some changes in the web.xml.

pom.xml

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>SpringWEB1</groupId>
  <artifactId>SpringWEB1</artifactId>
  <version>1</version>
  <packaging>war</packaging>
  <build>
    <sourceDirectory>src</sourceDirectory>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.4</version>
        <configuration>
          <warSourceDirectory>WebContent</warSourceDirectory>
          <failOnMissingWebXml>false</failOnMissingWebXml>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.1</version>
        <configuration>
          <source>1.7</source>
          <target>1.7</target>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
        <version>4.1.7.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
        <artifactId>servlet-api</artifactId>
        <version>2.5</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
        <artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
        <version>1.2</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</project>

Controller.java

package com.jmtm.controller;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;

@org.springframework.stereotype.Controller
public class Controller {

    @RequestMapping("/hi")
    public ModelAndView hi(){
        return new ModelAndView("Hello", "msg", "Hello user.");
    }

}

spring-servlet.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:c="http://www.springframework.org/schema/c"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
    xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
    xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-4.1.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-4.1.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/util http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util-4.1.xsd">

    <context:component-scan base-package="com.jmtm.controller"></context:component-scan>

    <bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
        <property name="prefix">
            <value>/</value>
        </property>
        <property name="suffix">
            <value>.jsp</value>
        </property>
    </bean>

</beans>

And the most important part of the solution, include the path of the servlet dispatcher (A.K.A. spring-servlet.xml) in the web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd" id="WebApp_ID" version="3.0">
  <display-name>SpringWEB1</display-name>
  <welcome-file-list>
    <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
  </welcome-file-list>

  <servlet>
        <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
            <param-value>/WEB-INF/spring-servlet.xml</param-value>
        </init-param>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

</web-app>

Something weird happen when I try to solve this. Any downloaded version of Spring from maven.springframework.org/release/org/springframework/spring gives me a lot of problems (Tomcat couldn't find servlet, Spring stops Tomcat, Eclipse couldn't start the server {weird}) so with many problems find many partial solutions. I hope this works for you.

As an extra help, in Eclipse, download from the Eclipse Marketplace the Spring STS Tool for Eclipse, this will help you to create configuration files (servlet.xml) and write code for the servlet in the web.xml file.

Answer 4

As a generic solution, I recommend that you remove all the secondary dependencies and run the application, if it worked, revert back some, and continue doing the same as long as the application starts, in the end, you will be able to identify which dependency caused the issue.

Using the same way, for example, I found that dependencies whose the groupId is: org.apache.axis2 have caused the issue.

 <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.axis2</groupId>
        <artifactId>axis2-transport-local</artifactId>
        <version>1.6.1</version>
 </dependency>
 <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.axis2</groupId>
        <artifactId>axis2-transport-http</artifactId>
        <version>1.6.1</version>
 </dependency>

Answer 5

Tomcat Server fails to start and throws the exception because, inside the section Deployment Descriptor:MyProyect / Servlet Mappings there are mappings that don´t exist. Delete or correct those elements; then starting the server works without problems.

Answer 6

When a servlet 3.0 application starts the container has to scan all the classes for annotations (unless metadata-complete=true). Tomcat uses a fork (no additions, just unused code removed) of Apache Commons BCEL to do this scanning. The web app is failing to start because BCEL has come across something it doesn't understand.

If the applications runs fine on Tomcat 6, adding metadata-complete="true" in your web.xml or declaring your application as a 2.5 application in web.xml will stop the annotation scanning.

At the moment, this looks like a problem in the class being scanned. However, until we know which class is causing the problem and take a closer look we won't know. I'll need to modify Tomcat to log a more useful error message that names the class in question. You can follow progress on this point at: https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=53161