Hi, it should be possible to be abled to start/stop/reload web-apps from the tomact-administrator. the reason is simple: in order to start/stop/reload a web-app, you have to have a context for the manager-app on every host. that's not what an admin wants. for example if there needs to be a servlet that need to handle _every_ request on /. the admin-app is usually accessible through a different http1.1-host.
Without patches, this will not be implemented (no current Tomcat developer seems willing to implement this).