You know, a Linux oriented forum might not be the best place to get servlet/JSP support.
I see you had a great conversation with yourself, though.
We can help you get Tomcat up and running on Linux but support with the actual JSPs and servlets is beyond the scope of this forum.
Have you checked out the
jGuru Servlet forums?
Good job on looking at the logs. Whenever you get ANY kind of error or problem, looking at logs is the first thing you want to do.
Peace...