The EAP server fails to start if there is space, special char or national character in any directory name in its path. Our current version of Release notes [1] does not contain information about this issue and our Installation Guide [2] does not define where ZIP distribution should be installed. Customer is currently free to decide where zip will be installed.

For example, if server is installed on path with the following special chars (tested on Linux with OpenJDK 1.7):

• spaces, national chars - Arjuna does not work
• '!' - JBoss AS classloading does not work
• '#' - Web container does not work
• '$' - Start script is unable to read org.jboss.Main class
• '%' - Loggin, WebServices, JBoss VFS do not work.

We have several options here:

• Improve our documentation
  Installation Guide [2] says "Unzip jboss-eap-<release>.zip to extract the archive contents into the location of your choice." We must define "safe" path where eap can be installed.
• Add issue as known issue item to Release Notes.
• Fix code. This is the best solution, but it will take some time to fix it.

See related issues JBPAPP-2442, JBPAPP-9036, SOA-2884.

[1] http://documentation-devel.engineering.redhat.com/docs/en-US/JBoss_Enterprise_Application_Platform/5/html/Release_Notes/Known_Issues_with_this_release.html
[2] http://documentation-devel.engineering.redhat.com/docs/en-US/JBoss_Enterprise_Application_Platform/5/html/Installation_Guide/Installation_With_ZIP_Download.html

Original issue has been detected on SOA platform by Jim Tyrrell.