Servlets and Folders in Tomcat 4.1

Question

I have Tomcat 4.1 running and try to launch my Servlet, it is only 1 .class file. (Win NT 4) Have put it in
<Tomcat dir>\Webapps\Root\Web-inf\classes
The web.xml in Web-inf look like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE web-app
PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN"
"http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd">
<web-app>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>HelloWorldServlet</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>HelloWorldServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
</web-app>
and it worked. But I don't know why. In Webbrowser i typed
http://localhost:8080/servlet/HelloWorldServlet
First question: is there any security problem when ein put my Servlets in this Folder? Can I securely refer from Websites to these Servlets?
I tried to put the .class file to
Webapps\HelloWorldServlet\Web-inf\classes
with the web.xml like above and made a server.xml statement:
<Context path="/HelloWorldServlet" docBase="HelloWorldServlet" debug="0" reloadable="true" crossContext="true" privileged="true" />
but nothing worked there.
I tried:
http://localhost:8080/HelloWorldServlet/HelloWorldServlet in browser
but became
HTTP Status 404 - /HelloWorldServlet/HelloWorldServlet
"The requested resource (/HelloWorldServlet/HelloWorldServlet) is not available."
I think the web.xml is not executed. How to solve that? Any additional settings in other files? I have read a lot of setting up tomcat and servlets, even in this forum but found no solution for that problem. Is there an order in server.xml where the entries should be, i placed it under <!-- Tomcat Examples Context -->
How to link in Html to a servlet?
Are there any Solutions for these problems? Any ideas?
Thanks for every hint!
Sorry for bad english.

Answer 1

First question: is there any security problem when ein put my Servlets in this Folder? Can I securely refer from Websites to these Servlets?
Based on my experience, no problem so far.
Webapps\HelloWorldServlet\Web-inf\classes
with the web.xml like above and made a server.xml statement:
<Context path="/HelloWorldServlet" docBase="HelloWorldServlet" debug="0" reloadable="true" crossContext="true" privileged="true" />
try to refer your servlet via
htp://localhost:8080/HelloWorldServlet/servlet/HelloWorldServlet
If tomcat can start successfully, it has already executed the server.xml. If you access the a context, the relevant web.xml will be executed.