If I start my Tomcat server and try to display Tomcats default page, why do I see a directory listing or 404 error page?
When creating Tomcat servers in WTP, the default is for the Tomcat server to use a separate instance from the Tomcat installation for reasons explained in this question. There is no attempt to serve the standard Web applications found in the installation. Instead, a simple “ROOT” Web application, containing just a minimal web.xml file, is provided as the default context. The URL “http://localhost:8080/” tries to display the welcome file at the base of this ROOT context. Since this ROOT context contains no welcome file, the default behavior for Tomcat is to display a directory listing. This is why you will see a directory listing for this URL with Tomcat 4.0, 4.1, and 5.0 servers. Directly listings have been disabled in Tomcat 5.5 and later, so the result is a 404 error page instead. To modify the Tomcat server in WTP to use the same server instance as the installation, see this question.
