Spring MVC: Controller RequestMapping working, but return always gives a 404

I suspect that you problem is in your servlet mapping. /* will force everything through your dispatcher servlet, including jsps. Try losing the *. I'll find the relevant part in the servlet spec and update....

From the servlet spec:

12.2 Specification of Mappings In the Web application deployment descriptor, the following syntax is used to define mappings: A string beginning with a ‘/’ character and ending with a ‘/*’ suffix is used for path mapping.

• A string beginning with a ‘*.’ prefix is used as an extension mapping.

• The empty string ("") is a special URL pattern that exactly maps to the application's context root, i.e., requests of the form . In this case the path info is ’/’ and the servlet path and context path is empty string (““).

• A string containing only the ’/’ character indicates the "default" servlet of the application. In this case the servlet path is the request URI minus the context path and the path info is null.

• All other strings are used for exact matches only.

So if you specify /* that overrides the *.jsp mapping, so jsp requests get routed back into your dispatcher servlet instead of hitting the jsp.