I understand the issue is that the jdk's FileURLConnection is producing too many Files/FDs because it eagerly list every directory url. So it has a greater chance of runing quickly out of FDs. Normally a GC should free those, but it seems the jdk on fedora has a problem with that.
I'm thinking of putting back our FileURLConnection impl and add support for directory listing. This looks like the safest option for now.
1) After AS5 start, why is there a consistent scan of console-mgr.sar and jbossws.sar only?
2) Dimitris, what are you planning to do? Override some method in FileUrlConnection?
I'll put back our implementation while adding a missing feature: http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBCOMMON-56
If there are other problems, we'll see then.
You shouldn't see the problem now with the upgrade to jboss-common-core 2.2.7.GA. Or if you do, that should happen with any previous version of JBoss.
If there is still a problem, then a solution should be found in the re-writing of some vfs/deployment logic to reduce the usage of URLs/URLConnections. Or remove the URL abstraction layer in VFS and deal with files directly.