Comment 9 for bug 788160

I think the configuration in GoobiConfig.properies only affects the PDF-Export not the images in the metadate editor.

In your example for the contentServerConfig.xml the cache is disabled (useCache="false") an therefore the wrong path doesn't matter.

In newer tomcat versions > 6.0.24 there is a new default entry in the server.xml
<Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.JreMemoryLeakPreventionListener"/>
that causes (if attribute appContextProtection="true", that's it by default) the error.

Look here:
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/config/listeners.html