Cannot access Tomcat from Eclipse in Ubuntu - eclipse

Question

I am having a problem accessing Tomcat from the browser if it was invoked from Eclipse, but it works fine if invoked from command prompt.
I have configured Eclipse to start Tomcat 5.5.23. It starts fine. If I try to connect to it at least to see the admin page using http://localhost:8081/ I get 404 error "The requested resource (/) is not available".
No logs are emitted in the logs folder which is very strange. If I invoke it from comman dprompt 9using startup.sh) I do get log files in logs. This is a new fresh install of Tomact from tomcat.apache.org.
The console on Eclipse doesn't show any activity when attempting to access Tomcat, just the normal start up or Tomcat.
I didn't have problem using and connecting to Tomcat in Eclipse on Windows platform before but I have absolutely no clue why it is failing to do so on Linux?
Any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

In your eclipse Run Configurations of your server instance catalina.base will not be same as your actual catalina home.
Set it to your catalina.home and it should work fine.

Answer 2

Are you sure Eclipse is configured to start the tomcat installation you currently starting manually?
There might be 2 installations, one shipped with eclipse and one other installed seperatly.
If so, it would be no wonder the admin-interface isn't accessable since -iirc- the admin-panel has to be installed afterwards.

Answer 3

If I try to connect to it at least to see the admin page using http://localhost:8081/ I get 404 error "The requested resource (/) is not available".
I don't know if this is the problem but 1. that's not the path of the admin application 2. it is actually not bundled with Tomcat 5.5. From the FAQ:
How do I install the Administration web app?
If you install Tomcat 5.5 binaries,
the Administration web app is not
bundled with it; this describes how to
add the Administration web app to your
Tomcat 5.5 installation. (Tomcat 4.1
comes with the Administration web app
as part of the binary).
The following refers to a Tomcat 5.5
set up on Windows 2000, so your path
names will be different on *nix
platforms. In this example, Tomcat
5.5.17 in installed in c:\Program Files\Apache Software
Foundation\Tomcat 5.5 (this is my
CATALINA_HOME).
Unzip or untar (be careful to use GNU tar) the file containing the
administration web app files (eg.
apache-tomcat-5.5.17-admin.zip) to a
temporary directory, eg. c:\temp.
Copy c:\temp\apache-tomcat-5.5.17\conf\Catalina\localhost\admin.xml to the directory c:\Program
Files\Apache Software
Foundation\Tomcat
5.5\conf\Catalina\localhost.
Copy the entire directory tree c:\temp\apache-tomcat-5.5.17\server\webapps\admin
to the directory c:\Program
Files\Apache Software
Foundation\Tomcat 5.5\server\webapps.
This is an overlay, so \server\webapps
is just pointing you to the
\server\webapps, and the admin
directory with its contents will be
the only thing you see added there.
Add a line to your c:\Program Files\Apache Software
Foundation\Tomcat
5.5\conf\tomcat-users.xml file so that you have a user who has admin
role. For example, add this line just
before the last line (containing
</tomcat-users>) of the file:
<user username="admin" password="makesomethingup" roles="admin,manager"/>
Restart Tomcat.
Now when you visit http://localhost:8080/admin you should
see a page that asks for a user name
and password. If you still see the "no
longer loaded" error message in your
browser, you must either force a full
reload of the web page (in Firefox,
hold down Shift key while clicking on
the Reload button) or just restart
your browser completely.