Ubuntu – Start tomcat webapp with root privileges

Okay, I got something that works.

I edited the /etc/tomcat6/policy.d/01system.policy and added at the bottom:

// Grant WebApps All Permission
grant codeBase "file:/var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/-" {
    permission java.security.AllPermission;
};

This works now, but not sure if its the right thing to do.

Do you use a mail session provided by Tomcat or do you create the mail session within your Application?

Look here for how to use a mail session provided by Tomcat:

http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/jndi-resources-howto.html#JavaMail_Sessions

That is the way you want to use an SMTP connection in Tomcat.

If you are using the mail session provided by Tomcat it needs the mail and activation jar in the classpath of the Tomcat. Normally this is achieved by putting these jar files into the tomcat/lib directory (if you download the package from tomcat.apache.org)

I guess the problem you have is caused by the special Tomcat Ubuntu directory configuration - I do not know which directory is equal to the tomcat/lib directory there. I usually install the original distribution from tomcat.apache.org by simply extracting it into the desired directory on my Ubuntu machines.