I have been struggling to get JBoss to let me configure an external directory with static pages. I got it to work changing Tomcat "server.xml", but you can't get the BASIC authentication working that way. So what I have to do is add "l:/photos.war" into the:

<attribute name="URLs">
 deploy/, file:///l:/photos.war
</attribute>

section of "server/all/conf/jboss-service.xml".
Unfortunately this means that the external directory has to end in ".WAR".
I would like to use "file:///l:/photos" in the "attribute URLS" section, but when I do I get an exception, probably something to do with the URLScanner only seems to work for things with extensions on them.

Is it possible to deploy a (WAR) directory that doesn't end in .WAR?

14:01:40,769 ERROR [MainDeployer] Could not initialise deployment: file:/l:/photos
org.jboss.deployment.DeploymentException: exception in init of file:/l:/photos; - nested throwable: (java.lang.NullPointerException)
 at org.jboss.deployment.DeploymentException.rethrowAsDeploymentException(DeploymentException.java:53)
 at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.init(MainDeployer.java:887)
 at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.deploy(MainDeployer.java:798)
 at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.deploy(MainDeployer.java:771)
 at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor44.invoke(Unknown Source)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:585)
 at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ReflectedDispatcher.invoke(ReflectedDispatcher.java:155)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.dispatch(Invocation.java:94)
 at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.AbstractInterceptor.invoke(AbstractInterceptor.java:133)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:88)
 at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ModelMBeanOperationInterceptor.invoke(ModelMBeanOperationInterceptor.java:142)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:88)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.AbstractMBeanInvoker.invoke(AbstractMBeanInvoker.java:260)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.MBeanServerImpl.invoke(MBeanServerImpl.java:659)
 at org.jboss.mx.util.MBeanProxyExt.invoke(MBeanProxyExt.java:190)
 at $Proxy8.deploy(Unknown Source)
 at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.URLDeploymentScanner.deploy(URLDeploymentScanner.java:334)
 at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.URLDeploymentScanner.scan(URLDeploymentScanner.java:522)
 at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.AbstractDeploymentScanner$ScannerThread.doScan(AbstractDeploymentScanner.java:207)
 at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.AbstractDeploymentScanner.startService(AbstractDeploymentScanner.java:280)
 at org.jboss.system.ServiceMBeanSupport.jbossInternalStart(ServiceMBeanSupport.java:289)
 at org.jboss.system.ServiceMBeanSupport.jbossInternalLifecycle(ServiceMBeanSupport.java:245)
 at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor2.invoke(Unknown Source)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:585)
 at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ReflectedDispatcher.invoke(ReflectedDispatcher.java:155)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.dispatch(Invocation.java:94)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:86)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.AbstractMBeanInvoker.invoke(AbstractMBeanInvoker.java:260)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.MBeanServerImpl.invoke(MBeanServerImpl.java:659)
 at org.jboss.system.ServiceController$ServiceProxy.invoke(ServiceController.java:978)
 at $Proxy0.start(Unknown Source)
 at org.jboss.system.ServiceController.start(ServiceController.java:417)
 at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor9.invoke(Unknown Source)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:585)
 at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ReflectedDispatcher.invoke(ReflectedDispatcher.java:155)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.dispatch(Invocation.java:94)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:86)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.AbstractMBeanInvoker.invoke(AbstractMBeanInvoker.java:260)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.MBeanServerImpl.invoke(MBeanServerImpl.java:659)
 at org.jboss.mx.util.MBeanProxyExt.invoke(MBeanProxyExt.java:190)
 at $Proxy4.start(Unknown Source)
 at org.jboss.deployment.SARDeployer.start(SARDeployer.java:302)
 at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.start(MainDeployer.java:1007)
 at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.deploy(MainDeployer.java:808)
 at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.deploy(MainDeployer.java:771)
 at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.deploy(MainDeployer.java:755)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:585)
 at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ReflectedDispatcher.invoke(ReflectedDispatcher.java:155)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.dispatch(Invocation.java:94)
 at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.AbstractInterceptor.invoke(AbstractInterceptor.java:133)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:88)
 at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ModelMBeanOperationInterceptor.invoke(ModelMBeanOperationInterceptor.java:142)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:88)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.AbstractMBeanInvoker.invoke(AbstractMBeanInvoker.java:260)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.MBeanServerImpl.invoke(MBeanServerImpl.java:659)
 at org.jboss.mx.util.MBeanProxyExt.invoke(MBeanProxyExt.java:190)
 at $Proxy5.deploy(Unknown Source)
 at org.jboss.system.server.ServerImpl.doStart(ServerImpl.java:482)
 at org.jboss.system.server.ServerImpl.start(ServerImpl.java:362)
 at org.jboss.Main.boot(Main.java:200)
 at org.jboss.Main$1.run(Main.java:464)
 at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:595)
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
 at org.jboss.deployment.SubDeployerSupport.addDeployableFiles(SubDeployerSupport.java:442)
 at org.jboss.deployment.SubDeployerSupport.addDeployableFiles(SubDeployerSupport.java:462)
 at org.jboss.deployment.SubDeployerSupport.addDeployableFiles(SubDeployerSupport.java:462)
 at org.jboss.deployment.SubDeployerSupport.processNestedDeployments(SubDeployerSupport.java:369)
 at org.jboss.deployment.SubDeployerSupport.init(SubDeployerSupport.java:284)
 at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.init(MainDeployer.java:861)
 ... 66 more
14:01:40,769 ERROR [URLDeploymentScanner] Incomplete Deployment listing:

--- Incompletely deployed packages ---
org.jboss.deployment.DeploymentInfo@5e5364ce { url=file:/l:/photos }
 deployer: org.jboss.deployment.JARDeployer@49d67c
 status: null
 state: FAILED
 watch: file:/l:/photos
 altDD: null
 lastDeployed: 1144933300753
 lastModified: 1144932639706
 mbeans:


14:01:41,456 INFO [Http11BaseProtocol] Starting Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-0.0.0.0-8080
14:01:41,659 INFO [ChannelSocket] JK: ajp13 listening on /0.0.0.0:8009
14:01:41,659 INFO [JkMain] Jk running ID=0 time=0/62 config=null
14:01:41,722 INFO [Server] JBoss (MX MicroKernel) [4.0.4.CR2 (build: CVSTag=JBoss_4_0_4_CR2 date=200603311500)] Started in 1m:719ms