I'm not able to log in Tomcat Manager App

Question

I have read a lot of topics in stackoverflow for solve my problem, but none was useful.

When I tried to log in Manager App ([http://localhost:8080/manager/html][1]) using a lot of different configurations, but I always obtained 401 Unauthorized after attempted to log in using the rights credentials. I restarted the tomcat server a couple of times.

This is my last configuration in conf/tomcat-users.xml

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <tomcat-users>  
      <role rolename="manager-gui"/>
      <role rolename="manager-script"/>
      <role rolename="manager-jmx"/>
      <role rolename="manager-status"/>
      <role rolename="admin-gui"/>
      <role rolename="admin-script"/>
      <user username="admin" password="admin" roles="manager-gui, manager-script, manager-jmx, manager-status, admin-gui, admin-script"/>
    </tomcat-users>

This is the part related to tomcat-users in server.xml

 <GlobalNamingResources>
    <!-- Editable user database that can also be used by
         UserDatabaseRealm to authenticate users
    -->
    <Resource name="UserDatabase" auth="Container"
              type="org.apache.catalina.UserDatabase"
              description="User database that can be updated and saved"
              factory="org.apache.catalina.users.MemoryUserDatabaseFactory"
              pathname="conf/tomcat-users.xml" />
  </GlobalNamingResources>

This is my configuration: Apache Tomcat: Version 7.0.40 64 bit Tested on Chrome 26

If there is something else useful that I forgot, let me know. Thanks in advance

Answer 1

From tailing [tomcat-root]/logs/catalina.out, I observed that you are using a locked username "admin"

06-May-2014 16:47:41.828 WARNING [http-nio-192.168.0.51-8080-exec-6] org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm.authenticate An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "admin"

You should try with a better(non guessable) username.

<role rolename="manager-gui"/>
<user username="TomcatAdmin" password="secpa55wd" roles="manager-gui"/>

This should definitely work for you.

Answer 2

Configuration looks fine for me . can you please try with below tomacat-users.xml.

<tomcat-users>
  <user name="admin" password="admin" roles="admin-gui,manager-gui" />
</tomcat-users>

Please restart the server after change.

Answer 3

Solutions above probably solved your problem.The locked user solution tipped me off on my issue.

Something weird I noticed... Don't know how it happened.

After installing a new tomcat7 I ended up with a "tomcat-users.xml" file owned by user root and group root.

I found out because catalina.out contains a few lines like "javax.naming.NamingException: /var/lib/tomcat7/conf/tomcat-users.xml (Permission denied)"

After changing file ownership to user "root" & group "tomcat7" fixed my login issue.

Answer 4

If you try any of the other Answers and then there is no difference, you may need to clean your Tomcat and then try again. These are my clean commands (not sure how general they are):

rm -R $TOMCAT_HOME/work/Catalina/<host>/*
rm -rf $TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/<app name>

Answer 5

Check syntax and start-ending tag. i did stupid mistake when i started work on java. This line was working for me.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<tomcat-users>
 <role rolename="manager-gui"/>
      <role rolename="manager-script"/>
      <role rolename="manager-jmx"/>
      <role rolename="manager-status"/>
      <role rolename="admin-gui"/>
      <role rolename="admin-script"/>
      <role rolename="manager-gui"/>
<user username="admin" password="admin" roles="manager-gui"/>
</tomcat-users>

Answer 6

In my case the password had special characters, that needed to be XML encoded before being added to the /opt/tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml file.

The tool that I used for the encoding was https://coderstoolbox.net/string/#!encoding=xml&action=encode&charset=us_ascii

Answer 7

Also verify that the tomcat-users.xml you are editing actually corresponds with the instance of Tomcat you are running. If you have multiple installations, but only one running, make sure you are editing the file at the correct location.

When you run startup.bat (or startup.sh), the script will output the CATALINA_* environmental variables. If the paths do match the current working directory you are running from, it is a good bet that you have been editing the wrong tomcat-users.xml file.