There was only the catalina.out file. I deleted it, restarted the container and got the same result. The permissions did look correct.
I looked into the catalina.out file and I am seeing the following error, which seems like the culprit:
INFO: Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/8.0.32 (Ubuntu)
Sep 25, 2018 7:08:21 PM org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve open
SEVERE: Failed to open access log file [/var/lib/tomcat8/logs/localhost_access_log.2018-09-25.txt]
java.io.FileNotFoundException: /var/lib/tomcat8/logs/localhost_access_log.2018-09-25.txt (Permission denied)
at java.io.FileOutputStream.open0(Native Method)
at java.io.FileOutputStream.open(FileOutputStream.java:270)
at java.io.FileOutputStream.<init>(FileOutputStream.java:213)
at org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve.open(AccessLogValve.java:579)
at org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve.startInternal(AccessLogValve.java:609)
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:147)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.startInternal(StandardPipeline.java:170)
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:147)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.startInternal(ContainerBase.java:930)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.startInternal(StandardHost.java:871)
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:147)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1408)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1398)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1149)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)
However, it doesn't appear that I'm able to exec any commands on the container or just into the container.
Any suggestions?