Jenkins putting '$' characters in file/folder names, breaking automatic backups

Question

I'm using Jenkins v1.546, hosted on a Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 machine.

I've set up a fairly simple job for building a Maven Java project. It polls the SCM with no schedule and picks up remote build triggers, requiring an authentication token. It uses Subversion and performs clean checkouts with svn update. Additionally, it has a post-build step that archives some build artifacts (i.e., the resulting WAR and WSDLs).

The issue I'm experiencing is that the builds that it stores on the filesystem itself contain invalid characters in their filenames. This causes our automatic backup process to blow up, it being unable to alter or remove those directories/files with the '$'. I myself cannot move/delete those folders or files either, but if I rename it and remove the $, then things work fine. Oh, and if I try to follow one of these links with the $ in it, it doesn't resolve. None of the other jobs seem to do this - just my job, of course. Anyone know why this may be occurring and what I can do to resolve this?

I've attached multiple screenshots that show the bad filename and my Jenkins job setup. I had to white out some company information. If I can provide any additional information to help troubleshoot this, just let me know.

Also, as an update, I did some additional research, looking through the changelogs for each released version of Jenkins since my version (latest is 1.557). I saw three possible issues in the changelogs that could be related, but it's hard for me to tell. I cannot simply upgrade our Jenkins to test out this theory, since I'll need to provide a reason for upgrading beyond a hunch.

https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-21023
https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-20534
https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-21958

Answer 1

The $ is a perfectly valid character in Windows directory name. You can manually make a folder with it, and delete it without any problems.

The com.company$moduleName syntax is used by Jenkins Maven-style job to separate modules of your build. If you don't see this structure for other people's jobs, it is because they are either not building a Maven job, or they don't have multiple modules in a single job.

What is strange though it that these are symlinks (I don't see that in my environment). It is possible that the location that is referenced by the symlink is deleted, but the link remains. In this case, you would not be able to navigate to that location through the link (this is what you are experiencing)

Is it possible that your backup software is deleting the target directories before deleting the links?

In any case, do a simple dir on the directory with the links to see what they link to. And then verify those target locations exists. If they don't, you need to figure out who/what is deleting the links' targets

Edit:
This seems to be more related to the issue that you are facing. Unfortunately, it's marked as "unresolved"
https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-20725

The issue stems from the fact that the symlinks are referencing to targets with / instead of \

My Maven plugin (not Maven version) is 2.6. See if upgrading your Maven plugin in Jenkins will help you. Also, I am running Maven 3.2.2 from the automatic installers. Try with that, as I don't see symlinks in my modules.