Troubleshoot tips for Web application deployment

Deployment of a Web application is successful if you can access the application by typing a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) in a browser, or if you can access the application by following a link.

If you cannot access your application, follow these steps to eliminate some common errors that can occur during migration or deployment.

Web module does not run in WebSphere Application Server Version 5.

Symptom Your Web module does not run when you migrate it to V5
Problem In V4.x, the classpath setting that affected visibility was Module Visibility Mode. In V5, use class loader policies to set visibility.
Recommended response Reassemble an existing module, or change the visibility settings in the class loader policies.

See article Migration of module visibility modes from V4.x for more information and examples.

Welcome page is not visible.

Symptom You cannot access an application with a Web path of: 

  /webapp/myapp
Problem The default welcome page for a Web application is assumed to be index.html. You cannot access the default page of the myapp application unless it is named index.html.
Recommended response To identify a different welcome page, modify the properties of the Web module during assembly.

HTML files are not found.

Symptom Your Web application ran successfully on prior versions, but now you encounter errors that the welcome page (typically index.html), or referenced HTML files are not found: 

Error 404: File not found: Banner.html
Error 404: File not found: HomeContent.html
Problem For security and consistency reasons, Web application URLs are now case-sensitive on all operating systems.

Suppose the content of the index page is as follows:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 5.0 Frameset//EN">
<HTML>
<TITLE>
Insurance Home Page
</TITLE>
    <frameset   rows="18,80">
    <frame      src="Banner.html"           name="BannerFrame"  SCROLLING=NO> 
    <frame      src="HomeContent.html"      name="HomeContentFrame">
    </frameset>
</HTML>

However the actual file names in the \WebSphere\AppServer\installedApps\... directory where the application is deployed are:

banner.html
homecontent.html
Recommended response To correct this problem, modify the index.html file to change the names Banner.html and HomeContent.html to banner.html and homecontent.html to match the names of the files in the deployed application.

For current information available from IBM Support on known problems and their resolution, see the IBM Support page.

IBM Support has documents that can save you time gathering information needed to resolve this problem. Before opening a PMR, see the IBM Support page.

Related concepts
Class loaders
Welcome files
Related tasks
Diagnosing and fixing problems
Securing applications and their environments
Deploying and managing applications
Related reference
JSP processor troubleshooting tips
Web applications: Resources for learning