The Tomcat 5.5 documentation states that catalina.jar is the only jar required on the classpath to run org.apache.catalina.realm.RealmBase.main. (See http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-5.5-doc/realm-howto.html#Digested%20Passwords) UNDER 5.0.28: If run with only catalina.jar, you get: Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/management/MBeanRegistration Adding the $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/jmx.jar to the classpath fixes this exception, but then you get: Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/commons/logging/LogFactory Adding $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/commons-logging-api.jar permits the program to run properly. UNDER 5.5.7: No jar distributed with Tomcat 5.5.7 contains javax/management/MBeanRegistration. If you add 5.0.28's jmx.jar and 5.5.7's commons-logging-api.jar, it works. Please correct the documentation (which is incorrect for Tomcat 5.5) and perhaps include JMX.jar with the latest distribution.
OK, docs corrected. There are license issues with including just any JMX jar, but we do include an implementation with the distro.