OK, the problem then is in J2eeApplicationMetaData. Method importJBossAppXml is where moduleOrder gets set to a non-null value. If the ear doesn't have a jboss-app.xml file, that method doesn't get called and moduleOrder gets left at null. That caused the NPE I described in line 275 of EARDeployer. If you initialize moduleOrder at the default value instead of null, this problem will go away. Then your WARN log will function as you intend -- to complain only if they set the value to something incorrect. BTW, I didn't port the fix I did for the NPE to HEAD, just did it in 4.0. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3967846#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...