Spring boot web app with embedded tomcat giving 404 error outside of Netbeans

Question

I am creating a Spring Boot web app (deployed as a JAR file) which contains an embedded Tomcat server. Everything works flawlessly on my dev machine but when i place the JAR file on a dedicated machine i get 404 errors no matter what i do. Here is the relevant code :

POM.XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

<groupId>com.mdenis</groupId>
<artifactId>LEM2</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

<name>Lab Equipment Manager</name>

<properties>
    <endorsed.dir>${project.build.directory}/endorsed</endorsed.dir>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
</properties>

<parent>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.4.RELEASE</version>
</parent>

<dependencies>

     <!--JAVA-->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.validation</groupId>
        <artifactId>validation-api</artifactId>
    </dependency>

    <!--TOMCAT-->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
    </dependency>

    <!--SPRING-->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        <exclusions>
    <exclusion>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-logging</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
        </exclusions>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-jdbc</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <!--<dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-security</artifactId>
    </dependency>-->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-orm</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-log4j2</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId>
        <optional>true</optional>
    </dependency>

    <!--MICROSOFT-->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.microsoft.sqlserver</groupId>
        <artifactId>mssql-jdbc</artifactId>
    </dependency>

    <!--HIBERNATE-->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
        <artifactId>hibernate-core</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
        <artifactId>hibernate-validator</artifactId>
        <version>6.0.12.Final</version>
    </dependency>

    <!--LOMBOK-->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.projectlombok</groupId>
        <artifactId>lombok</artifactId>
    </dependency>

    <!--JSTL-->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
        <artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
    </dependency>

</dependencies>

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>3.7.0</version>
            <configuration>
                <source>1.8</source>
                <target>1.8</target>
                <compilerArguments>
                    <endorseddirs>${endorsed.dir}</endorseddirs>
                </compilerArguments>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>3.1.1</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <phase>validate</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>copy</goal>
                    </goals>
                    <configuration>
                        <outputDirectory>${endorsed.dir}</outputDirectory>
                        <silent>true</silent>
                        <artifactItems>
                            <artifactItem>
                                <groupId>javax</groupId>
                                <artifactId>javaee-endorsed-api</artifactId>
                                <version>7.0</version>
                                <type>jar</type>
                            </artifactItem>
                        </artifactItems>
                    </configuration>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
            <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <phase>package</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>single</goal>
                    </goals>
                </execution>
            </executions>
            <configuration>
                <descriptorRefs>
                    <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
                </descriptorRefs>
                <finalName>LabEquipmentManager</finalName>
                <appendAssemblyId>false</appendAssemblyId>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>repackage</goal>
                    </goals>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

WebServerFactoryCustomizer bean :

@Bean
public WebServerFactoryCustomizer<ConfigurableServletWebServerFactory> webServerFactoryCustomizer() 
{
    return factory -> factory.setContextPath("/LEM2");
}

ViewResolver bean :

@Bean
public ViewResolver viewResolver() 
{
    InternalResourceViewResolver viewResolver = new InternalResourceViewResolver();
    viewResolver.setViewClass(JstlView.class);
    viewResolver.setPrefix("/WEB-INF/views/");
    viewResolver.setSuffix(".jsp");

    return viewResolver;
}

Part of the main controller (of course there is more to it, just including a part of it to show how the endpoints are built) :

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/")
public class MainController
{
    @Autowired
    private UserService userService;

    @RequestMapping(value = {"/", "/home"}, method = RequestMethod.GET)
    private String main(HttpServletRequest request) 
    {
        if (request.getSession().getAttribute("loggedInUser") != null)
        {
            return "home";
        }
        else
        {
            return "login";
        }
    }
}

Again, everything works perfectly on my dev machine by doing localhost:8080/LEM2. Any idea why it won't work when deployed on another server?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Confirm that the server is not faulty by deploying on another one. If the other deployment works, look into your server and make sure that no proxy application or another web server is running at the same time.