When deploying an EAR into WebSphere, what's the cause of a "duplicate entry" SaveFailureException?

Question

When attempting to install the EAR, the following exception results:

Caught Exception installing ApplicationName  
com.ibm.ws.scripting.ScriptingException: com.ibm.websphere.management.application.client.AppDeploymentException: AppDeploymentException: []  
org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.commonarchivecore.internal.exception.SaveFailureException: META-INF/application.xml  
META-INF/application.xml  
duplicate entry: META-INF/application.xml  
org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.commonarchivecore.internal.exception.SaveFailureException: org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.commonarchivecore.internal.exception.SaveFailureException: META-INF/application.xml  

Needless to say, the EAR file does not have two application.xml files within it, so I can't explain the "duplicate entry" error. Is this exception familiar to anyone? How is it resolved?

Solution 1

My advice is to open/explore the ear with 7-zip and make sure there are not two application.xml files at the META-INF level. Zip will create duplicate entries for files under many conditions, particularly if you are zipping source files together from multiple directories. We just had this exact same problem.

Solution 2

I faced this today..

Ear.setAppXml(): ear task in ant, are putting the duplicate entry of META-INF/application.xml, while re-packing an EAR (from the same location where its exploded).

setAppXml(): appxml attribute in ear task, needed a path to the application.xml file. If the path is specified as {exploded.dir}/META-INF/application.xml, then it puts two entries.

Solution:

Copy the META-INF/application.xml to some /tmp/app.xml
Pass "/tmp/app.xml" for setAppXml() / "appxml" in ear task
Delete the entry: {exploded.dir}/META-INF/application.xml
Pack the EAR now.

hope this helps..

Solution 3

Check if there is another application with the same name already deployed onto that server.