Tomcat JDBC MySQL ClassNotFoundException

I would like to use springMVC and JPA (using hibernate) on my tomcat 7 server (running locally on my Mac). I was able to set up everything successfully with an embedded H2 database. Now I switched to mysql and am getting the following error ``` java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver" org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1711) org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1556) ``` This suggests tomcat is having trouble finding the mysql-connector for java. There are a multitude of tutorials on how to add the connector to $CATALINA_HOME/lib. After trying to use a maven dependency for my project, I followed the advice and copied the .jar file into the lib directory: ``` $ ls $CATALINA_HOME/lib/mysql*.jar /Users/david/Applications/tomcat/lib/mysql-connector-java-5.1.20-bin.jar ``` I have read and execute permissions on the directory and file. At the moment I can't figure out how to make tomcat aware of the jar. The folder is included in ``` $CATALINA_HOME/conf/catalina.properties ``` and I have restarted the server multiple times. Thanks for you help.