Unable to set root/main/default servlet in Tomcat 5.5

Question

I'm on a shared hosting account with Tomcat 5.5 and cannot figure out why I can't set the default servlet. I want all incoming requests regardless of the relative path, to be handled by the Redirect servlet. There is only one servlet in the whole project.
Some examples
http://www.mydomain.com -> Redirect servlet (not working)
http://www.mydomain.com/ -> Redirect servlet (not working)
http://www.mydomain.com/a -> Redirect servlet
http://www.mydomain.com/blaldjflajdd -> Redirect servlet
With the below web.xml file, the last two above works just fine, but the first two gives a 403 error. What gives, I followed the Tomcat documentation to the teeth... It seems to work on my development server, but not on the shared hosting. Is this a setting anyone would block? Any help would be much appreciated.
The full web.xml setting below:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app id="WebApp_ID" version="2.4" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">
     <display-name>Redirect</display-name>
     <servlet>
          <display-name>Redirect</display-name>
          <servlet-name>Redirect</servlet-name>
          <servlet-class>com.somedomain.Redirect</servlet-class>
          <init-param>
               <param-name>host</param-name>
               <param-value>www.myotherdomain</param-value>
          </init-param>
          <init-param>
               <param-name>redirect-type</param-name>
               <param-value>301</param-value>
          </init-param>
     </servlet>
     <servlet-mapping>
          <servlet-name>Redirect</servlet-name>
          <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
     </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>I tried adding other mappings as well that didn't work, such as :
     <servlet-mapping>
          <servlet-name>Redirect</servlet-name>
          <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
     </servlet-mapping>What would happen if I try an empty url-pattern?
     <servlet-mapping>
          <servlet-name>Redirect</servlet-name>
          <url-pattern></url-pattern>
     </servlet-mapping>Any help would be much appreciated. I tried workarounds, by using an index.jsp file to supplement, but that isn't working quite right either. I prefer to have it setup properly though.... Please Help!!!

Answer 1

tomcat does not compile servlets, only JSP's will be translated and compiled on the fly. You need to compile them yourself, possibly using ANT or an IDE like NetBeans or Eclipse to make it easier to deploy the changes.