Warning, could not re-open xxyy.ear

Question

Hmm
So, I'm happily trying to implement container managed relationships. I realised that I need local interfaces not remote ones, so I changed the two or three entities .. I created local interfaces (but didn't delete the remote ones (yet)) .. there's nothing to change in the bean itself is there? .. and noticed that in Sun's deployment tool I wasn't able to change those beans to use a local interface. That leads me to think that I'd missed something somewhere.
Anyway, I tried to deploy and got a RemoteException: Error while validating XML deployment descriptors: Element "session" does not allow "ejb-ref" here.
I had a look through the descriptors, and realised I'd missed out converting one of the beans, so I created local interfaces for that too. With me so far? OK, here's the crunch.
The deploytool hung. I left it for half an hour (I've a slow m/c, running Linux), and it did nothing. So I closed it, closed the machine, and restarted.
Now it says it "could not re-open xxyy.ear". It's "Trying to set an ejb-local ref on an ejb while the ejb does not define local interfaces."
I tried to open the ear using the deploytool and it said the file is corrupt or cannot be read.
What does this sound like to you? Did I miss something while creating local interfaces? Here's a localHome:
import java.rmi.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.ejb.*;
public interface ProductLocalHome extends javax.ejb.EJBLocalHome
     // creates and initialises a bean instance
     public ProductLocal create (String pCode, String pName, String pDescription, boolean pDeprocated, boolean pDiscontinued, ProductTypeLocal pProductType) throws CreateException;
     public ProductLocal findByPrimaryKey (String primaryKey) throws FinderException;
}Here's a local
import java.rmi.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.ejb.*;
public interface ProductLocal extends EJBLocalObject
     // persistent fields
     public String getCode();
     public String getName();
     public String getDescription();
     public boolean getDeprocated();
     public boolean getDiscontinued();
     //public int getProductType();
     // notes say set methods aren't exposed to the public
     //public void setCode(String pCode);
     //public void setName(String pName);
     //public void setDescription(String pDescription);
     // select methods (carried over from ProductType)
     // public Collection getProducts() throws FinderException;
}See anything wrong? Would I need to change anything in the bean to use local rather than remote interfaces?
That ear file seems to be binary, is there another file with the deployment descriptors in that I can tinker with?
If I have torebuild the file, I'm not sure where to start .. with the front end or the back end.
J

Answer 1

Sorry, I'm not sure why that message above is so wide.
Anyway, would it work to bring back xxyy.ear from backup? Although it's a few weeks old (I knowwwww), actually my progress is pretty slow so that would be better than re-creating it from scratch. But would it work, or would I need to bring all the other files with it? If it did work on its own, it does create lots of files which seem to be sequentially numbered, would it handle finding a future number already in existence?
J