Reposting Question about WAR files because...

Question

... because I am truly at my wits end and almost out of time for this project. My apologies. Can someone please help? Thanks.
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I know this should be trivial but it is just not working for me...
I have a (Tomcat 3.2.3) application consisting of various html and jsp and tld files currently under \webapps\alan\app1. The tags refer to handlers and tei files in \webapps\WEB-INF\classes\alan\app1. The web.xml file in \webapps\WEB-INF does not refer to any of these elements at the moment. Everything works just fine.
I want to create an app1.war file for all the above which can be deployed somewhere else entirely, say c:\bob. According to what I read in various places, all I need to do is create a web.xml file that adds a <servlet> tag for the jsp files (using <jsp-file> rather than <servlet-class>), create an app1.war file using the jar utility, and add a <context> block to server.xml to define a virtual path to c:\bob\app1.war. I did all these but Tomcat (after restart) cannot find my jsp files.
I believe I must be specifying something incorrectly. Would the context block be something like:
<context path="/whatever" docBase="c:\bob\app1.war" crossContext="false" debug="0" reloadable="true" trusted="false">
Also, in the original location I pointed my browser at alan1/app1/fu.jsp and Tomcat found the files easily (since they were under webapps). Is it enough to just add to the web.xml file blocks like
<servlet><servlet-name>fu</servlet-name><jsp-file>fu.jsp</jsp-file>
or must I add something else to web.xml?
Perhaps the problem is in the URL I type into the browser address?? Should it be
http://host/whatever/fu
or
http://host/whatever/fu.jsp
or
http://host/whatever/alan/app1/fu.jsp
where "/whatever" is the virtual path to c:\bob\app1.war defined in server.xml?
Actually I tried all these (and other combinations) but without luck...
Please excuse the simplicity of this question but I just cannot seem to get the war file working

Answer 1

Your context is incorrect. The docBase parameter is relative to the Tomcat install directory. The following should work, provided tomcat is installed on the same drive as the jsp files etc:
<context path="/whatever" docBase="../bob/app1"
crossContext="false" debug="0" reloadable="true"
trusted="false">
The above works for the directory c:\bob\app1 with jsp & html in it, but I couldn't get it to work for a war file.
The idea of war files is that you upload them to a server, which unpacks them wherever it wants, and automatically adds the context to its list (so you really don't need to worry about context settings in server.xml, unless you want to define a custom url that maps to your files)
You can see this in action if you just put your war file in %TOMCAT_HOME%\webapps and start the server (don't make any other changes) - it will expand the war file automatically and add the context.
In fact, this would be a good first step to make sure your war works and you can access the jsps after you've changed the web.xml file
Incidentally, you wouldn't need to change the web.xml file, either, unless you specifically want to map an "alias" name to your jsps/servlets. If you're happy with just typin their actual names in your urls, then don't touch web.xml. If, however, you want the user to type "http://host/whatever/fu" instead of "http://host/whatever/fu.jsp", then you'd need to mess with web.xml
I'd advise doing one minimalist step at a time, since Tomcat will bite & scratch you otherwise ;-)