Can't get Jenkins to start using Tomcat

Question

I'm having a problem trying to deploy Jenkins war to Tomcat. I'm using CentOS with Java 1.6.0_28, Tomcat 6.0.24 and last version of jenkins as of January 21, 2014.

I think the problem is more related to Jenkins because of the log but not sure. When I google the error only find the classes that fire the exception but no solution. Here is the log. Any help is appreciated.

Jan 21, 2014 9:30:26 PM hudson.util.BootFailure publish
SEVERE: Failed to initialize Jenkins
hudson.util.NoHomeDir
    at hudson.WebAppMain.contextInitialized(WebAppMain.java:126)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStart(StandardContext.java:3972)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:4467)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:791)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:771)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:526)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR(HostConfig.java:905)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWARs(HostConfig.java:740)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployApps(HostConfig.java:500)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.start(HostConfig.java:1277)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.lifecycleEvent(HostConfig.java:321)
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:119)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1053)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.start(StandardHost.java:722)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1045)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine.start(StandardEngine.java:443)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.start(StandardService.java:516)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer.start(StandardServer.java:710)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start(Catalina.java:593)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:622)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.start(Bootstrap.java:289)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:414)

Answer 1

Jenkins tries to create /usr/share/tomcat7/.jenkins to store its data, but the directory isnt created, so it throws NoHome Exception.

To fix this, create the .jenkins manually (with correct own/grp permissions to tomcat) and restart tomcat.