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Java Filter not working on production environment Websphere 8.5

I have a filter used for authorization. It's the first step entering application. Without it is not possible to do anything in the application.
I set a systemout on the very first line of doFilter method to monitor the behaviour, so comparing websphere server log files I'm sure that filter (same Ear deployed) on Test environment works and on Production environment not.
Maybe it's server configuration issue...?
I have access to read and modify WAS Console of test environment.
I have access only to read WAS Console of production environment.
So I can compare them, and maybe test some change on test environment to replicate the behavior and say to production administrator what exactly setup....
Any suggestion on which setting I can check (Was console, maybe in relation with Web.xml, etc...)?
Thx a lot for any suggestion.
EDIT
I was able to retrieve via FTP the EAR in InstalledApps of Production environment. I noted a file named "web_merged.xml" in which is missing the entry of the filter.
Maybe the problem is here? When is created and why? Why could be missing the entry there? How let WAS to create the right file (if the problem is there)?

The problem was the one on the EDIT in the question, webmerged.xml was wrong. We weren't able to understand why WAS generated this file in wrong way.
What I understand is generated during deploy and is a mix of web.xml of the applicatin with application server configuration.
That's a WebSphere issue, we guessed it has to do with application server cache. We asked to System Administrator to:
Uninstall the application
Stop the server in which the application was installed
Clear the cache
Restart the server
Reinstall application
From this point the file was generated in the right manner, as the application bahaviour.
Websphere version is 8.5

Include deployment timestamp into JSP page

I'm writing web applications with Java EE 7 using JSP and servlets, deploying to a local Wildfly 10 server.
To help me developing and testing my code, it would be useful to include a little timestamp into the displayed webpage, so that I can directly see when the version I'm looking at in my browser was deployed.
That would prevent me from both forgetting to deploy changes as well as from looking at old cached versions instead of the latest one.
How can I display the date and time when a Java EE web app got deployed to my Wildfly server directly on the webpage?
My IDE is Eclipse Neon for Java EE, if that matters.

This is not deploytime, but starttime of the application. Maybe it is useful for your purpose. You can inject the class and use it to display data on your page.
#Startup
#Singleton
public class Deploytime
{
private LocalDateTime starttime;
#PostConstruct
public void init() {
starttime = LocalDateTime.now();
}
}
Apart from that I can only think of Maven Git Plugin which can generate things like buildtime, commit id, ... into a propery file, which you can also use to display it on the page (if you use git/maven).

There is likely an API to do this too but you can get the server start time from the command line. Assuming that you have your admin user name and password set up (i.e. you've run something like add-user.sh) you could run:
curl --digest "http://user:password#localhost:9990/management/core-service/platform-mbean/type/runtime?operation=attribute&name=start-time"
Of course, this is not Java - you'd either have to do a System.exec on this or use something like HttpClient. Additionally, the big issue here is that you've got to have your admin username and password available to the code.
The Wildfly HTTP Management Docs go into some more detail with a small sample Java snippet.
EDIT:
Sorry - should not have assumed that the server restarts on deployment. You can get deployment time for a web app with:
curl --digest "http://user:password#localhost:9990/management/deployment/test-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war/?operation=attribute&name=enabled-time"
However, that seems more difficult than the other answer of running something at startup. I don't see a deployment time for a webapp as that time would have to be stored somewhere in case of server restarts.

Apache Tomcat - Access Files Outside Webroot

I had deployed an application in the application server Apache
Tomcat. My GWT application needs to access files in folder "C:
\Storage". In development mode the application runs like a charm but
in an external web server (Apache Tomcat) it does not run, crashes
when it tries to copy files from "C:\Storage" to "\docs". I think this
might be because i'm trying to access files outside the webroot. How
can i solve this situation? Using apache commons libs to deal with
files? Could be permissions? I need some enlightment, some help will
be very apreciated.
Thanks in advance,
João Cavaleiro.

Another (wild) guess: if you deploy wars without unpacking as real files, getRealPath("/doc") will return null. (You have no files inside a war). So you have to configure Tomcat:
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/config/context.html
upackWAR = true

Thanks you all for the replies. I actually figured out what the problem was: Paths.
"\docs" is the folder located in the root of the app.
Unfortunately Apache didn't wrote any exception on catalina.out log (the code catch the exceptions ocurred).
Simply i didn't create a new File(pathname) with the absolute path of the destination location, i was using only the "docs/filename.txt" assuming that the File classe would recognize the full path, "knowing" the location in the filesystem of the app. I assume that this is a situation to keep in mind with sepecific application servers because with eclipse/Jetty it works but with Apache Tomcat don't (I am developing a GWT application).
But in the matteer of fact, the debbug was not easy, the debbug mode with external server didn't work in the server side in the peace of code where i it's needed to do this io operations strange), and the System.out.println that i managed to help me figure out the problem didn't show up in the catalina.stdout (strange to and yes, i have compiled and deployed it on the Apache Tomcat with that modifications twice).
Thanks to everyone.

Tomcat Deploying 2 Projects

I have a requirement that I need to use a single server machine to run 2 totally different applications.
The server machine has Apache Tomcat 6.0 installed. 1 of the applications is deployed on it and is running successfully for a long time. Initially, the clients used to connect to it by invoking the url "http://machine-name/1stProjectName/initialPage". I have also mentioned the "initialPage" as the Welcome Page in web.xml of this project. But somehow, later some ports or relating things were changed by the server maintenance team, and to connect to the application, now one has to use the url "http://machine-name" or "http://machine-name/initialPage", i.e. the machine name has started behaving like the project name folder because now if I invoke the url "http://machine-name/1stProjectName/initialPage", it gives 404 error saying that "/1stProjectName/1stProjectName/initialPage" resource not available.
Now, when I deploy the WAR of the second application into the webapps folder of Tomcat (just like I did for the first application), it unpacks it properly. But, the issue is how do I connect to this second project. If I use "http://machine-name", it takes me to the 1st application and if I use "http://machine-name/2ndProjectName/initialPage", it gives me an error that "/1stProjectName/2ndProjectName/initialPage" not available.
Kindly help or guide me in some direction.
Thanks in advance.

Your URLs should look like this if you did things properly:
Project 1: http://host:port/war-name-1
Project 2: http://host:port/war-name-2
That means no changes to content.xml to modify the path.

I would talk to your "server maintenance team" and let them know what you are trying to do (since they are the ones who made these changes in the first place). But it sounds to me that they just mapped a path to a specific location, that is your machine-name root is mapped to 1stProjectName.

Start / stop a web application from itself?

I've made a web application using Java, Struts and running over Apache Server and Tomcat. It would be very useful to be able to restart the application from the web. I don't want to restart Tomcat, only this webapp, the same way as Tomcat Manager does it.
Do you know how can I do it? If not, any way to simulate that behaviour (reload config.properties, make Hibernate init process, etc)?
Thank you a lot.

I took a quick look at the source code for the Tomcat Manager. It looks like there's a class that's part of the Tomcat source called "Container Servlet". From the javadocs:
A ContainerServlet is a servlet
that has access to Catalina internal
functionality, and is loaded from the
Catalina class loader instead of the
web application class loader.
A ContainerServlet automatically gets passed a wrapper that can be used to get the Context and Deployer -- and the Deployer has helpful methods such as start(String contextPath) and stop(String contextPath) that will do what you want.
So, what I think you would need to do is write your own servlet that inherits from ContainerServlet, and configure Tomcat to load your servlet using the Catalina class loader (look at how the Manager is configured to see how). Note that this is probably not going to be an option for you in a hosted environment.
Then your servlet could have, say, a button you press to reload the application. I recommend putting password-protection of some kind in front of that. :)

Just hit the URLs
http://<username>:<password>#<hostname>:<port>/manager/stop?path=/<context path>
to stop and
http://<username>:<password>#<hostname>:<port>/manager/start?path=/<context path>
to start. That simulates you using the manager application.

Tomcat Manager offers an http interface to start/stop an application and other tasks. There are Ant tasks that you can use to easily access these operations.