Version: 9.4.20.v20190813 |

Troubleshooting Locked Files on Windows
Previous | Chapter 33. Troubleshooting Home | Next

##### Contact the core Jetty developers at www.webtide.com

private support for your internal/customer projects ... custom extensions and distributions ... versioned snapshots for indefinite support ... scalability guidance for your apps and Ajax/Comet projects ... development services for sponsored feature development

## Troubleshooting Locked Files on Windows

Jetty buffers static content for webapps such as HTML files, CSS files, images, etc. If you are using NIO connectors, Jetty uses memory-mapped files to do this. The problem is that on Windows, memory mapping a file causes the file to lock, so that you cannot update or replace the file. Effectively this means that you have to stop Jetty to update a file.

### Remedy

Jetty provides a configuration switch for the `DefaultServlet` that enables or disables the use of memory-mapped files. If you are running on Windows and are having file-locking problems, you should set this switch to disable memory-mapped file buffers. Use one of the following options to configure the switch.

#### Using override-web.xml

An override-web.xml file can be placed in your webapp’s `WEB-INF` directory to change the default setting of the `DefaultServlet` for memory-mapped file buffers. Create an `override-web.xml` file with appropriate headers for your version of the servlet specification, and place the following inside the `<web-app>` element:

     <servlet>
       <servlet-name>default</servlet-name>
       <init-param>
         <param-name>useFileMappedBuffer</param-name>
         <param-value>false</param-value>
       </init-param>
     </servlet>

#### Using a Context XML File

You can create or update a context xml file that configures your webapp to apply the setting to disable memory-mapped file buffers. Add the following to your context xml file:

      <Call name="setInitParameter">
          <Arg>org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.Default.useFileMappedBuffer</Arg>
          <Arg>false</Arg>
      </Call>

#### Using the Jetty Maven Plugin

If you don’t want to use either of the other two solutions, you can configure the plugin directly to disable memory-mapped file buffers. Add the following to the plugin’s configuration under the `<webApp>` element:

      <_initParams>
              <org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.Default.useFileMappedBuffer>false</org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.Default.useFileMappedBuffer>
      </_initParams>

### Alternate Remedy

You can force a `WebAppContext` to always copy a web app directory on deployment. The base directory of your web app (i.e. the root directory where your static content exists) will be copied to the temp directory. Configure this in an xml file like so:

    <New id="myWebAppContext"  class="org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext">
      <Set name="contextPath">/</Set>
      <Set name="war">./webapps/fredapp</Set>
      <Set name="copyWebDir">true</Set>
      .
      .
    </New>

> ### Note

> Be careful with this option when using an explicitly settemp directory name - as the name of the temp directory will not unique across redeployments, copying the static content into the same directory name each time may not avoid the locking problem.

Previous | Top | Next
Chapter 33. Troubleshooting | Home | Preventing Memory Leaks

See an error or something missing? Contribute to this documentation at Github!(Generated: 2019-08-13)