You cannot put individual files on the classpath, only archives (zip, jar) and directories. Change /home/config/hibernate.cfg.xml to /home/config And regarding 3.1.1, there also is a 3.1.4 and even that is 'old'. When starting a new project (as you seem to do since it has not run in production) I'd certainly switch to at least 3.2.6SP1 View the original post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4258079#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...