Glassfish startup failure - glassfish

Question

I have set up a glassfish server for learning about it. After setting up and configuring depending on the quickstart guide, I was able to run the server and domain1 without any problems. after some time, it started to log the lines below:
[#|2013-01-11T15:43:45.246+0800|WARNING|glassfish3.1.2|java.util.prefs|_ThreadID=105;_ThreadName=Thread-2;|Could not lock User prefs. Unix error code 5.|#]
[#|2013-01-11T15:43:45.246+0800|WARNING|glassfish3.1.2|java.util.prefs|_ThreadID=105;_ThreadName=Thread-2;|Couldn't flush user prefs: java.util.prefs.BackingStoreException: Couldn't get file lock.|#]
And I made a little googling about this and found this link and applied the option which was recommended there. After restarting glassfish although the server log says it started, I am seeing this in the commandline:
./asadmin start-domain domain1
Waiting for domain1 to start .............Error starting domain domain1.
The server exited prematurely with exit code 1.
Before it died, it produced the following output:
Launching GlassFish on Felix platform
ERROR: Error creating bundle cache. (java.lang.Exception: Unable to lock bundle cache: java.io.IOException: Input/output error)
java.lang.Exception: Unable to lock bundle cache: java.io.IOException: Input/output error
at org.apache.felix.framework.cache.BundleCache.<init>(BundleCache.java:176)
at org.apache.felix.framework.Felix.init(Felix.java:629)
at com.sun.enterprise.glassfish.bootstrap.osgi.OSGiFrameworkLauncher$1.run(OSGiFrameworkLauncher.java:88)
Exception in thread "Thread-1" java.lang.RuntimeException: org.osgi.framework.BundleException: Error creating bundle cache.
at com.sun.enterprise.glassfish.bootstrap.osgi.OSGiFrameworkLauncher$1.run(OSGiFrameworkLauncher.java:90)
Caused by: org.osgi.framework.BundleException: Error creating bundle cache.
at org.apache.felix.framework.Felix.init(Felix.java:634)
at com.sun.enterprise.glassfish.bootstrap.osgi.OSGiFrameworkLauncher$1.run(OSGiFrameworkLauncher.java:88)
Caused by: java.lang.Exception: Unable to lock bundle cache: java.io.IOException: Input/output error
at org.apache.felix.framework.cache.BundleCache.<init>(BundleCache.java:176)
at org.apache.felix.framework.Felix.init(Felix.java:629)
... 1 more
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.enterprise.glassfish.bootstrap.GlassFishMain.main(GlassFishMain.java:97)
at com.sun.enterprise.glassfish.bootstrap.ASMain.main(ASMain.java:55)
Caused by: org.glassfish.embeddable.GlassFishException: java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.sun.enterprise.glassfish.bootstrap.osgi.OSGiGlassFishRuntimeBuilder.build(OSGiGlassFishRuntimeBuilder.java:164)
at org.glassfish.embeddable.GlassFishRuntime._bootstrap(GlassFishRuntime.java:157)
at org.glassfish.embeddable.GlassFishRuntime.bootstrap(GlassFishRuntime.java:110)
at com.sun.enterprise.glassfish.bootstrap.GlassFishMain$Launcher.launch(GlassFishMain.java:112)
... 6 more
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.sun.enterprise.glassfish.bootstrap.osgi.OSGiGlassFishRuntimeBuilder.newFramework(OSGiGlassFishRuntimeBuilder.java:230)
at com.sun.enterprise.glassfish.bootstrap.osgi.OSGiGlassFishRuntimeBuilder.build(OSGiGlassFishRuntimeBuilder.java:133)
... 9 more
Error stopping framework: java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.sun.enterprise.glassfish.bootstrap.GlassFishMain$Launcher$1.run(GlassFishMain.java:203)
Command start-domain failed.
I have tried to find a solution, removing the cache folder in the domain directory or changing access permissions but the problem keeps occuring and i cant start my domain.
any ideas how to fix this problem?

Answer 1

I had the same IO Error as in that stack after installing Glassfish and found out the following:
Glassfish 3.1.2 is using the felix library for OSGI stuff and this one wants to lock files using the core Java method java.nio.channels.FileChannel.tryLock(). This appears not to work when the file to be locked is on a filesystem residing on certain kinds of NAS and leads to an IO error after a long timeout.
Make sure to install critical parts or all of the Glassfish on local disks and this error will disappear.
The error can easily be reproduced running the following Java class:
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.nio.channels.FileChannel;
public class TryLock {
/**
* #param args
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
// name of a file is the only parameter
File lockFile = new File(args[0]);
FileChannel fc = null;
FileOutputStream fos = null;
try {
fos = new FileOutputStream(lockFile);
fc = fos.getChannel();
// This is the code that fails on some NAS (low-level operation?):
fc.tryLock();
} catch( Throwable th) {
th.printStackTrace();
}
System.out.println("Success");
}
}