IBM Worklight studio 6.0 development server does not start up

Question

When launching the Worklight server from eclipse (or even from windows powershell) it immediately throws the following exception (from the logs):

CWWKE0005E: The runtime environment could not be launched.
CWWKE0018E: An exception occurred while launching the runtime environment: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: WebSphere-DefaultExtension-windowsnt(unknown)
com.ibm.ws.kernel.boot.LaunchException: Caught unexpected exception java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: WebSphere-DefaultExtension-windowsnt(unknown)
    at com.ibm.ws.kernel.boot.internal.KernelBootstrap.rethrowException(KernelBootstrap.java:412)
    at com.ibm.ws.kernel.boot.internal.KernelBootstrap.go(KernelBootstrap.java:179)
    at com.ibm.ws.kernel.boot.Launcher.createPlatform(Launcher.java:131)
    at com.ibm.ws.kernel.boot.Launcher.main(Launcher.java:55)
    at com.ibm.ws.kernel.boot.cmdline.EnvCheck.main(EnvCheck.java:52)
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: WebSphere-DefaultExtension-windowsnt(unknown)
    at java.util.jar.Attributes$Name.<init>(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.jar.Attributes.getValue(Unknown Source)
    at com.ibm.ws.kernel.boot.internal.BootstrapManifest.getOSExtensionDefinition(BootstrapManifest.java:146)
    at com.ibm.ws.kernel.boot.internal.KernelBootstrap.go(KernelBootstrap.java:122)
    ... 3 more

The start.log file reports these commands to start the server:

arg0=worklightServer
arg1=--status:start
exit=22

               Command:  "java" -XX:MaxPermSize=512m  "-javaagent:C:\Users\xxx\Downloads\eclipse-jee-juno-SR2-win32-x86_64\eclipse\plugins\com.worklight.studio.plugin_6.0.0.20130926-1933\liberty\wlp\bin\tools\ws-javaagent.jar" -jar "C:\Users\xxx\Downloads\eclipse-jee-juno-SR2-win32-x86_64\eclipse\plugins\com.worklight.studio.plugin_6.0.0.20130926-1933\liberty\wlp\bin\tools\ws-server.jar" --batch-file start worklightServer
             Java home:  C:\Program Files\Java\jre7
          Install root:  C:/Users/xxx/Downloads/eclipse-jee-juno-SR2-win32-x86_64/eclipse/plugins/com.worklight.studio.plugin_6.0.0.20130926-1933/liberty/wlp/
      System libraries:  C:/Users/xxx/Downloads/eclipse-jee-juno-SR2-win32-x86_64/eclipse/plugins/com.worklight.studio.plugin_6.0.0.20130926-1933/liberty/wlp/lib/
             User root:  C:/Users/xxx/Downloads/eclipse-jee-juno-SR2-win32-x86_64/eclipse/plugins/com.worklight.studio.plugin_6.0.0.20130926-1933/liberty/wlp/usr/
         Server config:  C:/Users/xxx/Downloads/eclipse-jee-juno-SR2-win32-x86_64/eclipse/plugins/com.worklight.studio.plugin_6.0.0.20130926-1933/liberty/wlp/usr/servers/worklightServer/
         Server output:  C:/Users/xxx/Downloads/eclipse-jee-juno-SR2-win32-x86_64/eclipse/plugins/com.worklight.studio.plugin_6.0.0.20130926-1933/liberty/wlp/usr/servers/worklightServer/

I'm running Windows 8 64bits, with eclipse juno 64 bits and JRE7 and used the installation files provided directly from IBM (includes fixpack and interim fix). I've already tried the packages in the eclipse marketplace, but to no avail. It throws the same exception.

According to the answer to this question, the problem should be solved using the 64bit version of eclipse, but I´m already doing that. In desperation I´ve already started messing with the server.bat script in plugins/WKL_STDIO_PLUGIN/liberty/wlp/ but I don't see anything wrong.

Can anyone help me with this? Thank you!

Answer 1

This is a defect caused by a combination of Java (does not recognize Windows 8) and Liberty (does not handle unknown Windows os.name gracefully), so I recommend opening a PMR with IBM. As a workaround, you can specify -Dos.name=Windows 8 in jvm.options.

Edit: The fix for this is included as part of APAR PI26048