java.util.zip.ZipException: error in opening zip file

I've seen this exception before when whatever the JVM considers to be a temp directory is not accessible due to not being there or not having permission to write.

It could be related to log4j.

Do you have log4j.jar file in the websphere java classpath (as defined in the startup file) as well as the application classpath ?

If you do make sure that the log4j.jar file is in the java classpath and that it is NOT in the web-inf/lib directory of your webapp.

It can also be related with the ant version (may be not your case, but I do put it here for reference):

You have a .class file in your class path (i.e. not a directory or a .jar file). Starting with ant 1.6, ant will open the files in the classpath checking for manifest entries. This attempted opening will fail with the error "java.util.zip.ZipException"

The problem does not exist with ant 1.5 as it does not try to open the files. - so make sure that your classpath's do not contain .class files.

On a side note, did you consider having separate jars ?
You could in the manifest of your main jar, refer to the other jars with this attribute:

Class-Path: one.jar two.jar three.jar

Then, place all of your jars in the same folder.
Again, may be not valid for your case, but still there for reference.

I solved this by clearing the jboss-x.y.z/server[config]/tmp and jboss-x.y.z/server/[config]/work directories.

In my case , my -Dloader.path="lib" contains other jars that doesn't need. for example,mvn dependency:copy-dependencies lists 100 jar files.but my lib directory contains 101 jar files.

In my case SL4j-api.jar with multiple versions are conflicting in the maven repo. Than I deleted the entire SL4j-api folder in m2 maven repo and updated maven project, build maven project than ran the project in JBOSS server. issue got resolved.