What the hell is THIS?!

Hey folks, I'm running an easy servlet
with getRequestDispatcher delivering a session into a jsp file.
I have WinXP, jsk1.4 & jdkee1.3.1. Everything works fine on tomcat 3.0.
But on tomcat 4.0.3 i get a brain-kicking-crazy-no-way-to-deal-with exception:
--------------------
org.apache.jasper.JasperException: Unable to compile class for JSPerror: Invalid class file format in D:\JAVA\j2sdk1.4.0\jre\lib\rt.jar(java/lang/Object.class). The major.minor version '48.0' is too recent for this tool to understand.
D:\JAVA\J2EE\jakarta-tomcat-4.0\work\localhost\_\html-docs\jsp\deliverjsp$jsp.java:0: Class java.lang.Object not found in class javax.servlet.GenericServlet.
package org.apache.jsp;
-----------
What the hell is this? java.lang.Object not found? The major.minor version is too recent? Everythink is compiled and running on another version of tomcat! What does all this abracadabra mean?
ThanXX

Make sure that you are really running Tomcat with references to only JDK 1.4. This error message is only generated by older JVMs when presented with newer JAR files (i.e. a 1.3 JVM trying to read a 1.4 JAR file).
Hope that helps!

Thank's for reply. I guessed that there is some kind of error in JVM. I had tomcat 3.3 on the same machine earlier, and an older JVM, but i removed them. The JAVA_HOME and co. variables are set to the new jdk 4.0 path. Same about the tomcat. Were should I look for the "old" files?

Doublecheck servlet.jar! That would be my 1st course of action.

I've found the solution. I've copied the tools.jar file from jdk4.0 into tomcat. there is a tools.jar file also in one of the tomcat's directories, but it was much older (version of 2001). Since this change everything is working right. So, in case you will have such problems...

So Tomcat isn't really loading the JARs found under JAVA_HOME? It's using its own in some cases?!?

well, if tomcat would use only jar files from JAVA_HOME , there would be no files with the same name/extention in tomcat's package....
looks strange for me too

Wouldnt this be the case because your path variable may contain a "." before the JAVA_HOME?

Hmm. I've got the same problem on a Sun box.
I can't find tools.jar in the tomcat directory.
I'm using jakarta-tomcat-4.0.6-LE-jdk14 (i.e. the
special 1.4 version, and JDK 1.4.1

Any ideas?
Thanks
Ian

If you install tomcat using the .exe version, the installer will copy 'tools.jar' inside tomcat - but if you are using tomcat from a .zip or .tar.gz then tomcat uses the 'tools.jar' from JAVA_HOME
Rene

I had a similar issue and I copied the tools.jar file from jdk4.0 into tomcat tools.jar. Thanks Asher. You saved the day.

Hi Friends ,
I am facing same problem on a Sun box.Since i have installed tomcat4.0.6 using the .zip the tomcat uses the 'tools.jar' from JAVA_HOME , so I copied the tools.jar file from jdk1.4 into tomcat4.0.6 but still i am facing the same error

org.apache.jasper.JasperException: Unable to compile class for JSPNote: sun.tools.javac.Main has been deprecated.

/tomcat/jakarta-tomcat-4.0.6/work/Standalone/localhost/vacation/includes/adminTop1$jsp.java:4: Class or interface declaration expected.
import javax.servlet.*;
^

/tomcat/jakarta-tomcat-4.0.6/work/Standalone/localhost/vacation/includes/adminTop1$jsp.java:10: Superclass org.apache.jsp.HttpJspBase of class org.apache.jsp.adminTop1$jsp not found.
public class adminTop1$jsp extends HttpJspBase {

Any clues where am I going wrong

Thanks
Rahul