Tomcat BasicDataSourceFactory class not found due to incompatible location in libcommons-dbcp-java

[Eric P]

Binary package hint: libcommons-dbcp-java

Disclaimer: I'm pretty much a Java/Tomcat newb (go easy on me ;).

Ubuntu 8.10's libcommons-dbcp-java package provides the BasicDataSourceFactory class here:
org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory.class

However, Ubuntu 8.10's Tomcat 6 doesn't find the class as it is looking here:
org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory

Here is the relavant warning that appears in the catalina log file on a default Tomcat 6 install on Ubuntu 8.10.
org.apache.catalina.core.NamingContextListener addResource
WARNING: Failed to register in JMX: javax.naming.NamingException: Could not create resource factory instance [Root exception is java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory]

Trying to add a JDBC datasource in the conf/context.xml file doesn't work and produces only more of the above warning. So the default Tomcat 6 install on Ubuntu 8.10 is effectively broken in its current state.

Distro/package versions:
Ubuntu - 8.10
libcommons-dbcp-java - 1.2.2-1ubuntu1
tomcat6* - 6.0.18-0ubuntu3
libtomcat6-java - 6.0.18-0ubuntu3
libservlet2.5-java - 6.0.18-0ubuntu3

Thanks and let me know if I can provide further details.
Eric P

[Magne Rasmussen (magne-rasmussen)]

For a quick work-around, extract tomcat-dbcp.jar from the base Tomcat 6.0.18 distribution from Apache, and place it under /usr/share/tomcat6/lib. Also remove the symbolic links to commons-dbcp.jar and commons-pool.jar from this directory.
Please note that the Ubuntu 8.10 Tomcat6 distribution is completely hosed; you must place the JDBC driver jar into /usr/share/tomcat6/lib directory for it to be found, NOT, as you would think, in the /var/lib/tomcat6/lib directory. It seems like the 8.10 Tomcat6 distribution ignores this directory when building the classpath!

[Thierry Carrez (ttx)]

Magne:

Tomcat6 is run with CATALINA_HOME set to /usr/share/tomcat6 and CATALINA_BASE set to /var/lib/tomcat6. If you read the Tomcat RUNNING.txt doc (available at /usr/share/doc/tomcat6-common/RUNNING.txt.gz) you'll see that Tomcat6 is looking at libraries at CATALINA_HOME/lib and doesn't look into CATALINA_BASE/lib. So the current behavior is following the spec.

I agree that since it is ignored, the presence of a CATALINA_BASE/lib directory is, at best, confusing. Could you please file a new bug about that so that I can properly take care of that issue ?