Tomcat: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

catalina.policy

The configuration file for security decisions is catalina.policy, a standard Java format security policy file that is read by the Java Virtual Machine. But, this file is only used if you invoke Tomcat with the -security option. It contains a series of permissions, each granted to a particular codeBase, or set of Java classes. The general format is as follows:

// comment...
grant codeBase LIST {
     permission PERM;
    permission PERM;
    ...
}

This file and Tomcat security is discussed in great detail in Chapter 6 and is included here largely for completeness. As an example, the first permission granted in the distributed version of catalina.policy is:

// These permissions apply to javac
grant codeBase "file:${java.home}/lib/-" {
         permission java.security.AllPermission;
};