As of Payara version 5.2021.7 I can deploy my application automatically in docker on container start but it errors with Invalid ejb jar [my application]: it contains zero ejb.
However, I can log into the UI and deploy the application manually without any errors.
I'm pretty new to the java/payara world. Does anyone know why deploying it automatically requires an .ejb file but doing it manually doesn't?
The solution was to have the war file in the top level deployment directory ($DEPLOY_DIR) instead of having it nested inside another folder.