Just installed the (stable?) 5.5.20 binary distribution (apache-tomcat- 5.5.20.exe) using the included installer (custom install, took out the examples, docs, etc.), worked fine (with JRE 5.0.11 and later 5.0.10). Deployed the admin webapp (apache-tomcat-5.5.20-admin.zip) nicelly, which was working as expected, except two odd things: 1.) All connectors were appearing as HTTPS connectors regardless of their real type; when adding a new one, the selection of the type was properly reflected on the available fields, but upon saving the connector, they were again displayed as HTTPS connectors. When Commiting Changes, all values were properly commited to the server.xml (an AJP connector was really saved as an AJP connector, regardless that the admin webapp displayed HTTPS) 2.) In all the context configurations the Session ID Initializer value was full with garbage characters (quite random, although looks to be fixed length), kind of binary dump. ROOT: ®Ÿéð&Ìocèæ™9ëBåèÍŠt�OXîºíŠb5 /admin: Þ¾¥óet×`™ÔN$²•Á©ÉÜ…ïÄP6âÛ^¡ùM /manager: YEšæ*"ø\Lâ e;PhÀu²”µv&ª£¥„ Tried to install a little older different java runtime, took over a prooven working server.xml from an another server, deployed a different admin webapp (from 5.5.17), changed numerous things in the server.xml, but nothing helped. Only workaround I could find was to downgrade to 5.5.17, where none of these can be observed.
I have tested this with the latest version from svn and I can't reproduce this. Neither can I see anything in the change log that relates to fixes in any of these areas since the 5.5.20 release. I also downloaded 5.5.20 and the admin webapp and did a clean install. The only configuration change I made was to add the admin user to the both user. The admin app worked as expected and I saw neither of the errors you describe. This looks like a configuration issue but no obvious explanation comes to mind. I suggest you use the tomcat users list for help in resolving this.
My appologies for being short in writing down the circumstances, but in the meantime it turned out that the tcnative-1.dll (v1.1.4.0), which was enabled during the installation of the 5.5.20 (and was not used anymore when downgraded to 5.5.17) is causing this behavior, so I reopened this report. To reproduce: Install 5.5.20 using the installer, choose Custom install, and select the native.dll for installation. Deploy the admin webapp as usual.
Confirmed with the latest native dll as well. The all https makes sense but the session ID initializer is very strange. I'll take a closer look.
1. Reporting all connectors as https is a bug that is now fixed in svn. 2. The odd characters for are the Session ID Initializer a result of using APR to initialise the session Id generator. They are, as you observe, random and of fixed length. This is intentional. See http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/tomcat/container/tc5.5.x/catalina/src/share/org/apache/catalina/session/ManagerBase.java for the code that creates this.