Unable to start tomcat based app with java 9 because of default \"java.endorsed.dirs\" option in catalina.sh.
-Djava.endorsed.dirs=/usr/local/share/tomcat/en
In my case, what I did to answer the problem of Tomcat not running was to set Tomcat (version 7) with a lower Java version (e.g. Java 8).
Then, in startup.sh, shutdown.sh and catalina.sh I added the following:
export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.8`;