Apache Usergrid, tomcat7 403 error on database setup - tomcat7

Question

I have setup usergrid following this guide.
Steps I have done include:
1. Setup Cassandra (nodetool statusshows me one healty node and I can log in with cqlsh).
2. Setup ElasticSearch (curl localhost:9200 gives me a nice .json back, everything ok.)
3. Built the usergrid app with mvn clean install and moved the built ROOT.warto CATALINA_BASE
4. Created usergrid-deployment.propertiesto CATALINA_HOME at /usr/share/tomcat7
When I start tomcat7 service everything goes ok, no errors in catalina logs. Last line is "Server Startup".
In catalina.out log I have the line:
INFO: Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/7.0.52 (Ubuntu)
Mar 08, 2016 9:33:25 AM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployWAR
INFO: Deploying web application archive /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/ROOT.war
Mar 08, 2016 10:02:50 AM org.apache.catalina.util.SessionIdGenerator createSecureRandom
INFO: Creation of SecureRandom instance for session ID generation using [SHA1PRNG] took [5$
Mar 08, 2016 10:02:50 AM org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol start
INFO: Starting ProtocolHandler ["http-bio-8080"]
Mar 08, 2016 10:02:50 AM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina start
INFO: Server startup in 5561 ms
So the usergrid app should be running.
I can browse to localhost:8080 and see the Tomcat7"It works" - page.
However, when I try to setup the usergrid database like this:
curl -X PUT http://localhost:8080/system/database/setup -u [user]:[password]
I get a 403 error:
Access to the specified resource has been forbidden.
I am sure that my credentials match those that I have defined in usergrid-deployment.properties in CATALINA_HOME as usergrid sysadmin.login credentials.
In tomcat7 localhost_access_log I have the following output:
0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 - - [08/Mar/2016:12:27:43 +0200] "PUT /system/database/setup HTTP/1.1" 403 979
However (number2), when I try curl -v localhost:8080/status to see the status of the usergrid app, I get
404 - requested resource is not available
So, any help as to what I might do to:
a) be sure that the usergrid app is deployed correctly with tomcat (as there are no errors in logs
b) to solve the 403 issue?
Thank you for any help!
EDIT:
I noticed that my CATALINA_BASE(/var/lib/tomcat/) didn't have the WEB_INFdirectory inside webapps at all. In the guide I made reference to, we are only instructed to copy the ROOT.war file to webapps directory. Is this correct? Should I also copy the WEB-INF files from the usergrid stack?
Here is what the guide says:
The next step is to deploy the Usergrid Stack software to Tomcat. There are a variey of ways of doing this and the simplest is probably to place the Usergrid Stack ROOT.war file into the Tomcat webapps directory, then restart Tomcat.
I tried copying the WEB-INF files to CATALINA_BASE but that resulted in multiple errors and tomcat7 was unable to start:
This:
21:25:49,923 WARN Slf4jConnectionPoolMonitorImpl:31 - BadRequestException: [host=localhost(127.0.0.1):9160, latency=16(38), attempts=1]InvalidRequestException(why:You have not logged in)
And:
INFO transport:93 - [node-1] bound_address {inet[0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0:9301]}, publish_address {inet[/XX.XXX.XXX.XXX:9301]}
21:25:51,892 INFO discovery:85 - [node-1] elasticsearch/RIaKYgv1R-yTKJ_aknZOuw
21:25:51,905 WARN netty:620 - [node-1] exception caught on transport layer [[id: 0xc1bc7fca]], closing connection
java.net.UnknownHostException: localhost:9200
EDIT 2: I was adviced that only Elasticsearch v 1.4.4 works (I tried with 2.2.0) and for Cassandra 1.2.x and 2.1.x versions (I tried with 3.0.3). I havent yet tried with these versions, I'll update this question if I get it to work.

Answer 1

I don't have an answer for you but I do have a couple of observations:
If you see the Tomcat "it works" page that means that you have not deployed the Usergrid ROOT.war file.
If you see a 404 on /status, that also means Usergrid did not deploy properly.
The Usergrid ROOT.war file that comes with the official release, includes the WEB-INF directory and you do not need to deploy that separately. The only files you need to add to Tomcat are ROOT.war, usergrid-deployment.properties and (optionally) log4j.properties.
The problem is probably that Usergrid is unable to connect to Cassandra or ElasticSearch and ROOT.war file fails to deploy to Tomcat.
If you share you Usergrid properties file (remove any passwords first), it might be easier to diagnose the problem that is preventing the Usergrid WAR file from being deployed.