JBoss 4.0.5 startup takes 15 minutes deploying a single war file

Question

This instance of JBoss deploys several war files. The rest of the JBoss startup takes about 5 minutes or less. But when it gets to one particular war file, startup just hangs with no further output to the jboss log. It waits there for about 15 minutes and then suddenly the war starts deploying. The rest of the JBoss startup is then fine.

What I want to know is what steps do you recommend I take to diagnose the cause of this condition?

It is not possible to upgrade this site to a newer version of JBoss nor java (currently 1.5.0.7). It is running on 32-bit CentOS 5.3 Linux on 3 xen-based virtual servers in a load balanced configuration. The code is common to all three servers via an nfs share. This same issue was seen, however, when the 3 servers were physical and the code was local to each server. The servers are each 2 cpu, 4GB RAM servers.

Also as an FYI, the wars that deploy in this instance of JBoss are actually exploded wars contained in directories within the deploy directory.

Answer 1

Chances are, jBoss is unpacking the war file to the tmp directory. This will take a while on a machine with a slow disk or if the war is large. Try explodig it in the deploy directory. Here's a wiki on the topic, but the short version is create a directory with the name of the war, including the .war at the end, and unzip the contents into that. It'll be something like %JBOSS_HOME%\server\<instance>\deploy\<war_file>.war.

Answer 2

What I want to know is what steps do you recommend I take to diagnose the cause of this condition?

First of all 15 minutes are a typical timeout delay, maybe trying to access a network resource.

• 1st strace -p pid to find out what the server is doing (system calls)

• 2nd create a few thread dumps during idle time to find out where it gets stuck.

• 3rd check $JBOSS_HOME/bin/run.conf for JAVA_OPTS for weird changes.