Tomcat - Removing stuck .war apps

Question

I have installed a .war app into Tomcat, and something must have gone squiffy because in the Tomcat manager, the only button that is active is "Start", and the Undeploy button is grayed out. Pressing the start button results in the PC just hanging. I tried removing the .war file from webapps, and the unpacked file too, then uninstalling and reinstalling Tomcat, adding the .war file back, then starting Tomcat, but the manager still does not show the undeploy option. Any pointers on where I can look for the debris, and which log files to look at ?Tomcat Manager screenshot Maybe I have a memory leak ... if so, anybody have any pointers as to how to untangle it ? On Tomcat 8.5.59 ...

Here is the log extract of the last few lines as requested - might need to go back further ..... this part is from restarting Tomcat which was the last thing I did - if you want me to try something else and then repost the log please let me know Thanks

11-Nov-2020 03:02:07.394 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory Deployment of web application directory [C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 8.5\webapps\docs] has finished in [111] ms 11-Nov-2020 03:02:07.394 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory Deploying web application directory [C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 8.5\webapps\manager] 11-Nov-2020 03:02:07.499 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory Deployment of web application directory [C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 8.5\webapps\manager] has finished in [105] ms 11-Nov-2020 03:02:07.500 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory Deploying web application directory [C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 8.5\webapps\ROOT] 11-Nov-2020 03:02:07.580 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory Deployment of web application directory [C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 8.5\webapps\ROOT] has finished in [80] ms 11-Nov-2020 03:02:07.624 INFO [main] org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol.start Starting ProtocolHandler ["http-nio-8080"] 11-Nov-2020 03:02:07.649 INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start Server startup in 334464 ms

Answer 1

Looks like your Webapp is in fact already undeployed. Which is expected considering the steps you described doing.

The issue probably lies in the Webapp itself rather then tomcat. Pressing start simply starts the Webapp, and if it makes your PC hang you are probably doing something wrong in your webapp's startup.

Try starting the webapp, and then looking at the logs to find what might be the issue. You can also try to completely disable any startup logic you have in your webapp to see if this is what causes the issue.