I'm experimenting with Java web development, and it seems that I've messed up with my current tomcat6 installation, especially its configuration files.
How to recover tomcat6 to its original state as if it was freshly installed?
PS: Re-installing it (via apt-get) doesn't seem to work!
I assume just deinstalling tomcat6 doesn't remove the config files that are placed in /etc/tomcat6. So you will have to purge tomcat6 using sudo apt-get purge tomcat6 before re-installing the package. Additionally, there may be cached files in /var/cache/tomcat6 that may affect a reinstall, so you should check that directory before reinstalling, too.
EDIT:
If purging tomcat's config doesn't solve the problem, there may be more causes for tomcat stopping to work, e.g. a messed-up java setup. To check this, the easiest way is to install a second JRE (OpenJDK, for example), modify the alternatives so the newly-installed JDK is used (sudo update-alternatives --config java), and restart tomcat. If this works, the problem is likely caused by the config of the previously used JRE/JDK.
If it doesn't work, more information about tomcat's malfunction are required: details about tomcat's behaviour, error messages when running tomcat manually from the command line, contents of tomcat's logs (catalina.out and so on).
