SpringSource dm Server occastionally fails to unpack valid ZIP file

When deploying my project to SpringSource dm Server, every once in a while a JAR fails to deploy with the following message:

/mnt/myproject/springsource/work/com.springsource.server.deployer/packed/my.project.0.1.10.M.jar' cannot be unpacked.

java.util.zip.ZipException: error in opening zip file

There are 5 .war files in the project. If one of them fails, it's always the same one (which is also the last one to be copied into the pickup directory). However, usually all 5 will deploy without issues. It is the exact same set of files in all instances, taken from a maven repository, just deployed to new server instances.

The file that fails can be opened just fine by 7-Zip. If I stop Spring, clear the pickup directory, start Spring and copy the .war files to pickup again, it will usually work.

The usual deployment process is:

Start Spring
Wait until it reports Open for business with profile 'web'
Copy all 5 projects with a 2 second delay between each copy (scripted).

Solution

You don't say which version of dm Server you are running, so I would recommend upgrading to 2.0.x to pick up fixes if you haven't already. You may also like to upgrade to Eclipse Virgo which is the continuation of the dm Server project.

My guess is that the heuristic in dm Server for determining when a file copy into pickup has terminated is playing up, possibly due to a slow or irratic copy operation. Is there anything unusual about your disk, such as encryption or remote mount, which may interfere with the copy operation?

One way to rule out the heuristic would be to place the files in the pickup directory when dm Server is not running and then start dm Server when the copy operation has definitely completed. If the problem reproduces, then there may be a problem in the JRE you are using.