IntelliJ says 'cannot run program '/path/to/tomcat/bin/catalina.sh' error=13 permission denied

In short, from a console:

chmod a+x /path/to/tomcat/bin/catalina.sh

This assumes that you 've elided the Tomcat path in your post, and checked that it really does exist on your system before posting here. Depending on the existing permissions of the file, you may need to issue the above command as a user with sufficiently elevated privileges.

Solution: You set permission for Tomcat directory:

chmod -R 777 apache-tomcat-directory

I meet this error today. It's because I take a wrong package of Tomcat6. In Max OS, I should download the tar.gz , but I download the zip. Make sure you get the right Tomcat package.