NUL device on windows and JBoss 7.1.2

[rsinghal]

We are observing a weird issue on windows 2008 machines. When we start jboss, it doesn't start and prints on console that "The system cannot find the file specified.". I debugged it further and found that while setting JAVA_OPTS it redirects output to nul device and where it is throwing this error. I searched and found that nul device is missing on this machine. JBoss was working fine on this machine earlier and all of sudden this device disappered. We observed this issue on multiple windows 2008 machines. To reproduce this problem, I took a windows 2008 machine where nul device was present, I started the JBoss and restarted the machine while Jboss was starting and on restart I could see that nul device was missing. There is something in JBoss AS 7.1.2 which is causing this problem. Does anyone encountered the same problem? Is there any solution for this?

[ctomc]

Hi,

nul is a device that is really commonly used in scripts and startup scripts wont work without it.

on *nix systems there is /dev/null that is always present.

the nul device is used in script more often than just when JAVA_OPTS are set...

for now I would recommend you not to remove null device or to re-add it.

We are researching a posibilty to provide powershell startup script which would resolve this problem (among many others).

But that is currently only an idea...

--

tomaz

[rsinghal]

Thanks Tomaz for quick reply. Is there any workaround for it?

[ctomc]

Ravi,

the only possible workaround i can think of is reinstalling NUL device, http://bytes.com/topic/net/answers/264804-compile-error-null-device-missing

to test it try typing dir > NUL and if it does not report any error your everything is ok.

--

tomaz

[rajesh_gawas]

Ravi,

It’s an issue with Windows and JBoss 7.1.2 and the steps to resolve it are:

1.    Go to a server on which NULL device driver is present.

2.    Open registry. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE->SYSTEM->CurrentControlSet->Services->Null

3.    Right click and select ‘Export’, specify the path. Save the file as ‘Null.reg’

4.    Move the above file to problematic server.

5.    Go to the path mentioned under step 2 above.

6.    Select ‘Services’. Go to File menu and select import option. Point it to the Null.reg file. It shows a message added to registry successfully.

7.    Restart the server.

8.    That’s it

Regards,

Rajesh