Problem with symbolic link

[fkj]

I'm trying to create a symbolic link inside my application at runtime.

String realPath = getServletContext().getRealPath("/download");
realPath += "/tmp";
if(!FileUtils.isSymlink(new File(realPath)))
{
     Runtime.getRuntime().exec("ln -s /tmp " + realPath);
}

After the symbolic link is created my application stops working and I get the following exception:

java.lang.NullPointerException
     org.jboss.seam.deployment.URLScanner.handleDirectory(URLScanner.java:155)
     org.jboss.seam.deployment.URLScanner.handleDirectory(URLScanner.java:160)
     org.jboss.seam.deployment.URLScanner.handleDirectory(URLScanner.java:160)
     org.jboss.seam.deployment.URLScanner.handleDirectory(URLScanner.java:160)
     org.jboss.seam.deployment.URLScanner.scanDirectories(URLScanner.java:48)
     org.jboss.seam.deployment.WarRootDeploymentStrategy.scan(WarRootDeploymentStrategy.java:77)
     org.jboss.seam.deployment.ForwardingDeploymentStrategy.scan(ForwardingDeploymentStrategy.java:31)
     org.jboss.seam.deployment.TimestampCheckForwardingDeploymentStrategy.changedSince(TimestampCheckForwardingDeploymentStrategy.java:15)
     org.jboss.seam.init.Initialization.redeploy(Initialization.java:812)
     org.jboss.seam.web.HotDeployFilter.doFilter(HotDeployFilter.java:45)
     org.jboss.seam.servlet.SeamFilter$FilterChainImpl.doFilter(SeamFilter.java:69)
     org.jboss.seam.servlet.SeamFilter.doFilter(SeamFilter.java:158)

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Felipe

[jeanluc]

Are you sure there is a cause & effect relationship here? It's unlikely executing an external command would trigger a redeploy.

[fkj]

The problem is the symlink itself. If I execute the command from the terminal the problem happens too, and the application returns to work only if I remove it.

I think it can be some permission issue. I changed the link to the home folder of my user instead of /tmp and it worked fine.