Interesting issue while deploying an angular application (Tomcat 10.1.x)

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We have an angular based web application with a bunch of static resources.

The war is present under the "webapps" app base.

Understandably it is NOT right way (and fixed in later deployments), but th=
e server.xml has:


<Context path=3D"/ui"> ... </Context>

This caused an issue while deploying and accessing this application on a Wi=
ndows 2019 setup.
I don't have full access to this environment and hence could not do more de=
bugging than necessary.

Gemini AI gave a below possible explanation to this very rare problem (ther=
e were multiple identical setups and none of them seen any issue).


This <Context> tag sits inside a <Host> container where appBase=3D"webapps"=
 and it causes Tomcat to get into a race condition:
Auto-Deployer: Tomcat scans the webapps folder, sees a folder named ui, and=
 deploys it automatically as a standard web app.
Explicit Deployer: Tomcat reads server.xml, sees your <Context path=3D"/ui"=
> block, and tries to deploy a second application mapped to /ui using an ab=
solute path reference.
Because of this conflict, Tomcat splits the application in memory. The init=
ial mapping (which handles the 302 redirect) belongs to one deployment inst=
ance, but when it goes to fetch index.html or test.txt, it looks at the exp=
licit server.xml context instance.
Potential cause of this:

Due to differences in disk speed, CPU core scheduling, or security file-loc=
king delays (like an EDR agent scanning the files on boot), the server.xml =
parser registers the context first. This breaks the link to the physical we=
bapps directory, causing the files to become invisible to the web server.

Does this explanation seem reasonable?

FWIW, the setup has 20 CPUs and also has Trellix Endpoint Security software=
.

Appreciate any insights into this very odd issue.
We fixed it by removing the Context element from server.xml.

Thanks,
Amit

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