WSO2 application server 5.3.0: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Negative time error when deploying app as ROOT context

Question

When I try to run a simple test war file as the ROOT context of WSO2 Application Server version 5.3.0, I get the following error:

[2016-03-19 17:24:00,177] ERROR {org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve} - Servlet.service() for servlet [jsp] in context with path [/] threw exception [Unable to compile class for JSP] with root cause java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Negative time at java.io.File.setLastModified(File.java:1421) at org.apache.jasper.compiler.Compiler.compile(Compiler.java:377) at org.apache.jasper.compiler.Compiler.compile(Compiler.java:354) at org.apache.jasper.compiler.Compiler.compile(Compiler.java:341) at org.apache.jasper.JspCompilationContext.compile(JspCompilationContext.java:657) at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:357) at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:395) at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:339) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:727) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:303) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:208) at org.apache.tomcat.websocket.server.WsFilter.doFilter(WsFilter.java:52) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:241) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:208) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:220) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:122) at org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:504) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:170) at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:103) at org.wso2.carbon.statistics.webapp.RequestIntercepterValve.invoke(RequestIntercepterValve.java:47) at org.wso2.carbon.bam.webapp.stat.publisher.WebAppStatisticPublisherValve.invoke(WebAppStatisticPublisherValve.java:104) at org.wso2.carbon.tomcat.ext.valves.CompositeValve.continueInvocation(CompositeValve.java:99) at org.wso2.carbon.tomcat.ext.valves.CarbonTomcatValve$1.invoke(CarbonTomcatValve.java:47) at org.wso2.carbon.webapp.mgt.TenantLazyLoaderValve.invoke(TenantLazyLoaderValve.java:57) at org.wso2.carbon.tomcat.ext.valves.TomcatValveContainer.invokeValves(TomcatValveContainer.java:47) at org.wso2.carbon.tomcat.ext.valves.CompositeValve.invoke(CompositeValve.java:62) at org.wso2.carbon.tomcat.ext.valves.CarbonStuckThreadDetectionValve.invoke(CarbonStuckThreadDetectionValve.java:159) at org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve.invoke(AccessLogValve.java:950) at org.wso2.carbon.tomcat.ext.valves.CarbonContextCreatorValve.invoke(CarbonContextCreatorValve.java:57) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:116) at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:421) at org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process(AbstractHttp11Processor.java:1074) at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:611) at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.doRun(NioEndpoint.java:1739) at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(NioEndpoint.java:1698) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615) at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)

If I run the same application as any other context path e.g. /testurl it works perfectly. So what could be causing the above Negative time error only when trying to run it as ROOT?

PS: To run my app as root I did two things:

1. moved all other apps out of the webapps directory and renamed my war to ROOT.war
2. In ./repository/conf/carbon.xml I set WebContextRoot to <WebContextRoot>/carbon</WebContextRoot>so now the default carbon management app is available on /carbon path. (which works perfectly btw.)

This test app has only one single index.jsp file with following content:

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8"
    pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<%@ page import="java.util.*"%>

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Test headers</title>
</head>
<body>
<%
    out.println("request.getServerName()="+request.getServerName()+"</br>");
    String[] serverurl= request.getServerName().split("\\.");   
    String clientcode=serverurl[0];
    out.println("clientcode="+clientcode+"</br>");

    Enumeration headerNames = request.getHeaderNames();
    while (headerNames.hasMoreElements()) {
        String key = (String) headerNames.nextElement();
        String value = request.getHeader(key);
        out.println(key+"="+value+"</br>");
    }
%>
</body>
</html>

I have seen this Negative time from JSP compiler and it is not applicable in my case. There are no spaces, periods or hyphen characters anywhere in paths of my test war. It could be caused by trailing slash in application context but if it is, I can't figure out what could be causing it.

How do I solve this Negative time problem?