I encountered the same problem earlier and followed these steps to get it working:
create a new group for tomcat sudo groupadd tomcat
create a tomcat user and add this user to the tomcat group created earlier
sudo useradd -M -s /bin/nologin -g tomcat -d /opt/tomcat tomcat
Update permissions for tomcat on the installation directory (e.g., /opt/tomcat as used above)
sudo chgrp -R tomcat /opt/tomcat (this gives tomcat ownership over the directory)
sudo chmod -R g+r conf
sudo chmod g+x conf (this and the one above gives tomcat read/write perm on conf dir)
sudo chown -R tomcat webapps/ work/ temp/ logs/ (makes user, tomcat, owner of the following dirs)
4. Open tomcat installation parent directory, i.e., /opt, as root, right click on the tomcat folder -> properties -> permissions -> folder access, change to create and delete files.```
And Jesus said, "It is finished."