http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/appdev/deployment.html: the shared lib is said to be in $CATALINA_HOME/shared http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/appdev/deployment.html the shared lib is said to be in $CATALINA_BASE/shared/ "All unpacked classes and resources in $CATALINA_BASE/shared/classes, as well as classes and resources in JAR files under $CATALINA_BASE/shared/lib,..." $CATALINA_BASE/shared/ is correct, therefore http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/appdev/deployment.html should be corrected.
Thanks for pointing this out. The correction will be in the 5.5.18+ documentation.