Server is not connected when trying to deploy with intellij

Question

I am trying to build, deploy and debug my webapp inside intellij.

I have setup my tomcat using this answer and I was able to get the server running. The issue is that my webapp is not being deployed, though it is defined in the deployment tab.

I am getting the following error: server is not connected. Deploy is not available

If I copy the war and start the server everything works Ok. With ports 8080 and 8000.

What am I doing wrong?

Just in case it is somehow related, the project is build with Maven & Spring

I added the Run/Debug Configuration for the Server:

Server Tab

Deployment Tab

Debug Console output:

D:\development\infra\appServers\apache-tomcat-7.0.47\bin\catalina.bat run [2014-08-05 01:23:11,413] Artifact devstage:war exploded: Server is not connected. Deploy is not available. Using CATALINA_BASE:   "C:\Users\chaim\.IntelliJIdea13\system\tomcat\Unnamed_devstage_4" Using CATALINA_HOME:   "D:\development\infra\appServers\apache-tomcat-7.0.47" Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: "D:\development\infra\appServers\apache-tomcat-7.0.47\temp" Using JRE_HOME:        "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_45" Using CLASSPATH:       "D:\development\infra\appServers\apache-tomcat-7.0.47\bin\bootstrap.jar;D:\development\infra\appServers\apache-tomcat-7.0.47\bin\tomcat-juli.jar" Aug 05, 2014 1:23:12 PM org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener init INFO: Loaded APR based Apache Tomcat Native library 1.1.29 using APR version 1.4.8. Aug 05, 2014 1:23:12 PM org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener init INFO: APR capabilities: IPv6 [true], sendfile [true], accept filters [false], random [true]. Aug 05, 2014 1:23:12 PM org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener initializeSSL INFO: OpenSSL successfully initialized (OpenSSL 1.0.1e 11 Feb 2013) Aug 05, 2014 1:23:12 PM org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol init INFO: Initializing ProtocolHandler ["http-apr-8080"] Aug 05, 2014 1:23:12 PM org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol init INFO: Initializing ProtocolHandler ["ajp-apr-8009"] Aug 05, 2014 1:23:12 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina load INFO: Initialization processed in 902 ms Aug 05, 2014 1:23:12 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService startInternal INFO: Starting service Catalina Aug 05, 2014 1:23:12 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine startInternal INFO: Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/7.0.47 Aug 05, 2014 1:23:12 PM org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol start INFO: Starting ProtocolHandler ["http-apr-8080"] Aug 05, 2014 1:23:12 PM org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol start INFO: Starting ProtocolHandler ["ajp-apr-8009"] Aug 05, 2014 1:23:12 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina start INFO: Server startup in 35 ms [2014-08-05 01:23:21,363] Artifact devstage:war exploded: Server is not connected. Deploy is not available. Aug 05, 2014 1:23:22 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployDirectory INFO: Deploying web application directory D:\development\infra\appServers\apache-tomcat-7.0.47\webapps\manager [2014-08-05 01:23:38,311] Artifact devstage:war exploded: Server is not connected. Deploy is not available. 

Answer 1

In short:

After setting my IntelliJ configuration to run the latest version of Tomcat that I was running in the background my problem was resolved.

A brief description:

I had the exact same error in my IntelliJ 14 while I had a setup and was working on another machine. While the source of the issue can differ, in my case here was the root cause:

I basically had two different versions of Tomcat Installed on my machine. Tomcat 8 was running in the background on port 8090 and despite of setting my debugger instance port to be 8091 it was giving me the following error:

Server is not connected. Deploy is not available.

and The following warnings:

1:21:18 PM It is possible to bind and connect to localhost:8091 at the same time - application server will probably compete with some other software on the port

1:32:39 PM Application Server was not connected before run configuration stop, reason: Unable to ping server at localhost:1099

After setting my IntelliJ configuration to run the latest version of Tomcat that I was running in the background my problem was resolved.

Hint: Running applications in debug mode can slow them down a fair bit. I usually have two instances running. One in debug mode and one in normal mode in two different ports. This way I can have a normal instance of my web application as well as a debugger instance for more in depth investigations.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

In my case, this problem was due to a JAVA_OPTS variable defined in catalina.bat (or catalina.sh).

I only commented the first line of catalina.bat and everything started working. Here is the line :

set "JAVA_OPTS=-Xmx1024M -XX:MaxPermSize=512m -Djava.util.logging.config.file=logging.properties -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true" 

To comment, put rem in front of it. rem is the way to comment a line in windows .bat files.

I suppose that this line conflicts with IntelliJ JAVA_OPTS settings. In fact, IntelliJ tries to set a port on tomcat to use as a debugger, but the catalina.bat JAVA_OPTS variable deleted this setting.