grails app will not deploy on tomcat FAIL - Application could not be started

My first experience with implementing my own rackspace cloud server is going really well up to this point.

I have Debian installed and I am running tomcat 5.5 on the server. I have a grails application that I created a war file of. (I am using grails 1.3.2 BTW) I open the Tomcat manager and use the upload and deploy war feature.

The war uploads without any problem but does not run the application right away and when I click the deploy button next to the application in the manager I get the

FAIL- Application at context path /app could not be started.

I have no clue where to start at this point and no idea why it isn't starting the app. Any help or suggestions would be great.

-Matthew

OK I changed my server configuration and that didn't seem to help but I am able to get some log info from catalina.out now.

Jul 3, 2010 10:47:24 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployWAR
INFO: Deploying web application archive fulcrum.war
log4j:ERROR setFile(null,true) call failed.
java.io.FileNotFoundException: stacktrace.log (Permission denied)
        at java.io.FileOutputStream.openAppend(Native Method)
        at java.io.FileOutputStream.<init>(FileOutputStream.java:207)
        at java.io.FileOutputStream.<init>(FileOutputStream.java:131)
        at org.apache.log4j.FileAppender.setFile(FileAppender.java:290)
        at org.apache.log4j.FileAppender.activateOptions(FileAppender.java:164)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
        at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:616)
        at org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.callsite.PojoMetaMethodSite$PojoCachedMethodSiteNoUnwrapNoCoerce.invoke(PojoMetaMethodSite.java:229)
        at org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.callsite.PojoMetaMethodSite.call(PojoMetaMethodSite.java:52)
        at org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.callsite.CallSiteArray.defaultCall(CallSiteArray.java:40)
        at org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.callsite.AbstractCallSite.call(AbstractCallSite.java:117)
        at org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.callsite.AbstractCallSite.call(AbstractCallSite.java:121)
        at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.plugins.logging.Log4jConfig.createFullstackTraceAppender(Log4jConfig.groovy:169)
        at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.plugins.logging.Log4jConfig.this$2$createFullstackTraceAppender(Log4jConfig.groovy)
        at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.plugins.logging.Log4jConfig$this$2$createFullstackTraceAppender.callCurrent(Unknown Source)
        at org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.callsite.CallSiteArray.defaultCallCurrent(CallSiteArray.java:44)
        at org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.callsite.AbstractCallSite.callCurrent(AbstractCallSite.java:143)
        at org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.callsite.AbstractCallSite.callCurre开发者_运维知识库nt(AbstractCallSite.java:147)
        at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.plugins.logging.Log4jConfig.configure(Log4jConfig.groovy:136)
        at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.util.Log4jConfigListener.contextInitialized(Log4jConfigListener.java:63)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStart(StandardContext.java:3972)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:4467)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:791)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:771)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:526)
        at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR(HostConfig.java:905)
        at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployApps(HostConfig.java:525)
        at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.check(HostConfig.java:1359)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
        at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:616)
        at org.apache.tomcat.util.modeler.BaseModelMBean.invoke(BaseModelMBean.java:297)
        at com.sun.jmx.interceptor.DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.invoke(DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.java:857)
        at com.sun.jmx.mbeanserver.JmxMBeanServer.invoke(JmxMBeanServer.java:795)
        at org.apache.catalina.manager.ManagerServlet.check(ManagerServlet.java:1475)
        at org.apache.catalina.manager.HTMLManagerServlet.doPost(HTMLManagerServlet.java:250)
        at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:637)
        at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:717)

use the following snippet in grails-app/Config.groovy:

def catalinaBase = System.properties.getProperty('catalina.base')
if (!catalinaBase) catalinaBase = '.'   // just in case
def logDirectory = "${catalinaBase}/logs"

log4j = { root ->
    appenders {
        rollingFile name:'stdout', file:"${logDirectory}/${appName}.log".toString(),  maxFileSize:'100MB'
        rollingFile name:'stacktrace', file:"${logDirectory}/${appName}_stack.log".toString(), maxFileSize:'100MB'
     }

     error  'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.servlet',  //  controllers
            'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.pages', //  GSP
            'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.sitemesh', //  layouts
            'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.mapping.filter', // URL mapping
            'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.mapping', // URL mapping
            'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons', // core / classloading
            'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.plugins', // plugins
            'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.orm.hibernate', // hibernate integration
            'org.springframework',
            'org.hibernate'
     root.level = org.apache.log4j.Level.WARN
 }

check you configuration file to see where your log files are being written to. The error indicates there is a permission problem with your configuration. Your application is trying to create files that it does not have permission to create.

Look in the Tomcat logs. If there was a problem deploying the war, there will usually be some log message describing the problem. I can't remember how the logs are organized in 5.5 (I'm using 6) but I think you should start with the one called catalina.out.