Bug#486947: tomcat5.5: Can't start with too many files in temp, rm -rf fails

[Vera Mickaël]

Package: tomcat5.5
Version: 5.5.20-2etch2
Severity: important


I used th following commands to stop and start tomcat :

/etc/init.d/tomcat5.5 stop

... do manipulations

/etc/init.d/tomcat5.5 start

and tomcat refused to start with the following error message :

Starting Tomcat servlet engine: tomcat5.5/etc/init.d/tomcat5.5: line 150: /bin/rm: Liste d'arguments trop longue
(in english "Liste d'arguments trop longue" stands for "too many args")

We have modified scripts to handle multiple instances so lines numbers may differ from standard script. The line with the probleme is the 
following one :

                rm -rf "$CATALINA_BASE"/temp/* \
                        "$CATALINA_BASE/logs/catalina.out"

Removing files by hands soved the problem. Maybe removing the dir "temp" instead of all the files would solve the problem ?

For me this problem is important as the service provided by tomcat has been interrupted more time than we expected. 

Mickaël 


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-5-amd64
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages tomcat5.5 depends on:
ii  adduser                  3.102           Add and remove users and groups
ii  apache2-utils            2.2.3-4+etch4   utility programs for webservers
ii  apache2.2-common         2.2.3-4+etch4   Next generation, scalable, extenda
ii  ecj-bootstrap            3.2.1-3         bootstrap version of the Eclipse J
ii  gij-4.1 [java2-runtime]  4.1.1-20        The GNU Java bytecode interpreter
ii  libtomcat5.5-java        5.5.20-2etch2   Java Servlet engine -- core librar
ii  sun-java5-jre [java2-run 1.5.0-14-1etch1 Sun Java(TM) Runtime Environment (

tomcat5.5 recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information