Just to close this out, I have found my answer.
After getting [b]hzhang_in[/b]'s response it occurred to me that my use of a virtual server might be causing the issue. I did some additional testing and confirmed that was the case.
I found this thread which explained why it was a problem.
[i]
http://forums.java.net/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=234961𹗑[/i]
Basically, autodeploy has no method for specifying the virtual server that the app should be associated with. As a result, it gets associated with the default server. When I would try to go to the app using the virtual server, it would get confused because there was no app associated with that virtual server name. When I manually deployed the app I must have been updating the associated virtual server as well and that is why it worked in those cases.
So as it turns out, there was nothing wrong with the app and nothing wrong with the virtual server setup. The only issue is that there does not appear to be any way to specify the virtual server in the sun-web.xml or something to tell the autodeployer what virtual server the app should be associated with. If someone knows of a way to do this, then I would appreciate the knowledge, otherwise I am content to just deploy using [b]asadmin deploy[/b] with the appropriate options.
Thanks.
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