Java Webstart intermittant JAR not updating

Question

We use java Webstart to deploy a java application on our intranet. The application receives frequent updates. Once in awhile a user will launch the application from their desktop icon after we have updated the JARs / WAR on the webserver (timestamp changed) and Java Webstart will launch the old version instead of downloading a new one.

Here is a paste of our JNLP, as you can see offline-allowed is on, but update check always and policy always. Also, download flag is eager. From my understanding these options should always result in a check of cache against timestamp on server and a download of the JAR file.

I'm starting to get frustrated with Webstart! Has anyone seen similiar problems? Any solutions? I'm getting sick of walking people through clearing their webstart cache manually every third or fifth update.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE jnlp PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc//DTD JNLP Descriptor 6.0//EN" "http://java.sun.com/dtd/JNLP-6.0.dtd"&gt;
<jnlp spec="1.0+" codebase="$$codebase" href="$$name">
  <information>
    <title>TITLE</title>

    <vendor>VENDOR</vendor>

    <description>Our Utility Application</description>

    <description kind="short">Our Utility Application PRD</description>
    <icon href="images/util_icon.png" height="64" width="64"/>
    <offline-allowed/>
    <shortcut online="true">
      <desktop />
      <menu submenu="Utility Apps"/>
    </shortcut>
  </information>

  <security>
     <all-permissions />
  </security>

  <update check="always" policy="always" />

  <resources>
    <!-- requires 1.6+ -->
    <j2se version="1.6+" href="http://java.sun.com/products/autodl/j2se" java-vm-args="-ea" initial-heap-size="128m" max-heap-size="512m" />

    <!-- application code, download jar before we start. -->
    <jar href="OurUpdatedJarName.jar" main="true" download="eager" />

    <property name="configfile" value="updatedJarName.config" />
  </resources>

  <application-desc main-class="main.Client">
    <argument>-D</argument> 
  </application-desc>
</jnlp>

Answer 1

Hello, we have distributed java web start applications over a dozen countries and when we have found that the application wasn't updating correctly it was for a miss-configuration of the county net, or in the network settings of user computer, mostly the proxy. In our central officines in spain java web start allways work ok.

Answer 2

Assuming the client JREs are up to date, you might try <update check="timeout" policy="always"/> as suggested in this thread and described in the JNLP syntax documentation.