This happens in 5.5.9 and 5.5.8 on solaris and fedora linux but works fine in
5.0.28. Creating symlink under app's root directory causes an exception when
trying to view directory. For instance I can do:

cd webapps/jsp-examples/colors
mkdir temp
ln -s temp temp1

and when I http://localhost:8080/jsp-examples/colors

it produces this:

2005-08-18 14:15:01,430 [http-8080-Processor25] ERROR
org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.[Catalina].[local
host].[/apres].[default] - Servlet.service() for servlet default threw exception
java.lang.NullPointerException
        at
org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet.renderHtml(DefaultServlet.java:1345)
        at
org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet.render(DefaultServlet.java:1102)
        at
org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet.serveResource(DefaultServlet.java:807)
        at
org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet.doGet(DefaultServlet.java:335)
        at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:689)
        at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:802)
        at
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:252)
        at
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:173)
        at
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:213)
        at
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:178)
        at
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:126)
        at
org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:105)
        at
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:107)
        at
org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:148)
        at
org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.process(Http11Processor.java:856)
        at
org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.processConnection(Http11Protocol.ja
va:744)
        at
org.apache.tomcat.util.net.PoolTcpEndpoint.processSocket(PoolTcpEndpoint.java:527)
        at
org.apache.tomcat.util.net.LeaderFollowerWorkerThread.runIt(LeaderFollowerWorkerThread.java:80)
        at
org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.ThreadPool$ControlRunnable.run(ThreadPool.java:684)
        at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:595)