http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/architecture/startup/serverStartup.txt

Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more  contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with  this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0  (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with  the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and  limitations under the License.Tomcat 5 Startup SequenceSequence 1. Start from Command LineClass: org.apache.catalina.startup.BootstrapWhat it does:    a) Set up classloaders        commonLoader (common)-> System Loader        sharedLoader (shared)-> commonLoader -> System Loader        catalinaLoader(server) -> commonLoader -> System Loader    b) Load startup class (reflection)        org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina        setParentClassloader -> sharedLoader        Thread.contextClassloader -> catalinaLoader    c) Bootstrap.daemon.init() completeSequence 2. Process command line argument (start, startd, stop, stopd)Class: org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap (assume command->start)What it does:    a) Catalina.setAwait(true);    b) Catalina.load()        b1) initDirs() -> set properties like                          catalina.home                          catalina.base == catalina.home (most cases)        b2) initNaming            setProperty(javax.naming.Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY,                    org.apache.naming.java.javaURLContextFactory ->default)        b3) createStartDigester()            Configures a digester for the main server.xml elements like            org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer (can change of course :)            org.apache.catalina.deploy.NamingResources                Stores naming resources in the J2EE JNDI tree            org.apache.catalina.LifecycleListener                implements events for start/stop of major components            org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService                The single entry for a set of connectors,                so that a container can listen to multiple connectors                ie, single entry            org.apache.coyote.tomcat5.CoyoteConnector                Connectors to listen for incoming requests only            It also adds the following rulesets to the digester                NamingRuleSet                EngineRuleSet                HostRuleSet                ContextRuleSet        b4) Load the server.xml and parse it using the digester            Parsing the server.xml using the digester is an automatic            XML-object mapping tool, that will create the objects defined in server.xml            Startup of the actual container has not started yet.        b5) Assigns System.out and System.err to the SystemLogHandler class        b6) Calls initialize on all components, this makes each object register itself with the            JMX agent.            During the process call the Connectors also initialize the adapters.            The adapters are the components that do the request pre-processing.            Typical adapters are HTTP1.1 (default if no protocol is specified,            org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol)            AJP1.3 for mod_jk etc.    c) Catalina.start()        c1) Starts the NamingContext and binds all JNDI references into it        c2) Starts the services under 
    
      which are:            StandardService -> starts Engine (ContainerBase ->Logger,Loader,Realm,Cluster etc)        c3) StandardHost (started by the service)                Configures a ErrorReportValvem to do proper HTML output for different HTTP                errors codes                Starts the Valves in the pipeline (at least the ErrorReportValve)                Configures the StandardHostValve,                    this valves ties the Webapp Class loader to the thread context                    it also finds the session for the request                    and invokes the context pipeline                Starts the HostConfig component                    This component deploys all the webapps                        (webapps & conf/Catalina/localhost/*.xml)                    Webapps are installed using the deployer (StandardHostDeployer)                    The deployer will create a Digester for your context, this digester                    will then invoke ContextConfig.start()                        The ContextConfig.start() will process the default web.xml (conf/web.xml)                        and then process the applications web.xml (WEB-INF/web.xml)        c4) During the lifetime of the container (StandardEngine) there is a background thread that            keeps checking if the context has changed. If a context changes (timestamp of war file,            context xml file, web.xml) then a reload is issued (stop/remove/deploy/start)    d) Tomcat receives a request on an HTTP port        d1) The request is received by a separate thread which is waiting in the PoolTcpEndPoint             class. It is waiting for a request in a regular ServerSocket.accept() method.             When a request is received, this thread wakes up.        d2) The PoolTcpEndPoint assigns the a TcpConnection to handle the request.            It also supplies a JMX object name to the catalina container (not used I believe)        d3) The processor to handle the request in this case is Coyote Http11Processor,            and the process method is invoked.            This same processor is also continuing to check the input stream of the socket            until the keep alive point is reached or the connection is disconnected.        d4) The HTTP request is parsed using an internal buffer class (Coyote Http11 Internal Buffer)            The buffer class parses the request line, the headers, etc and store the result in a            Coyote request (not an HTTP request) This request contains all the HTTP info, such            as servername, port, scheme, etc.        d5) The processor contains a reference to an Adapter, in this case it is the            Coyote Tomcat 5 Adapter. Once the request has been parsed, the Http11 processor            invokes service() on the adapter. In the service method, the Request contains a            CoyoteRequest and CoyoteRespons (null for the first time)            The CoyoteRequest(Response) implements HttpRequest(Response) and HttpServletRequest(Response)            The adapter parses and associates everything with the request, cookies, the context through a            Mapper, etc        d6) When the parsing is finished, the CoyoteAdapter invokes its container (StandardEngine)            and invokes the invoke(request,response) method.            This initiates the HTTP request into the Catalina container starting at the engine level        d7) The StandardEngine.invoke() simply invokes the container pipeline.invoke()        d8) By default the engine only has one valve the StandardEngineValve, this valve simply            invokes the invoke() method on the Host pipeline (StandardHost.getPipeLine())        d9) the StandardHost has two valves by default, the StandardHostValve and the ErrorReportValve        d10) The standard host valve associates the correct class loader with the current thread             It also retrieves the Manager and the session associated with the request (if there is one)             If there is a session access() is called to keep the session alive        d11) After that the StandardHostValve invokes the pipeline on the context associated             with the request.        d12) The first valve that gets invoked by the Context pipeline is the FormAuthenticator             valve. Then the StandardContextValve gets invoke.             The StandardContextValve invokes any context listeners associated with the context.             Next it invokes the pipeline on the Wrapper component (StandardWrapperValve)        d13) During the invocation of the StandardWrapperValve, the JSP wrapper (Jasper) gets invoked             This results in the actual compilation of the JSP.             And then invokes the actual servlet.    e) Invocation of the servlet class