The beta of JBoss AS 5.0 does not support hot deployment (see the readme file). Therefore, you will have to copy the war file to the deploy directory first and then start (or restart) the server. And no, you cannot modify the beta to support hot deployment (well you could, but it would take you a long time to figure it out). There has already been a forum discussion on this topic. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3992788#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...