title: Unable to set auto deploy directory on Liferay Portal 6.0
body: <p>I am working with Liferay 6.0 on JBoss 5.1.1, Windows 8 is the OS. On server startup I always get the following error explaining the auto deploy directory can't be found:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ERROR [AutoDeployDir:90] Directory F:\liferay-portal-ee-6.0\deploy could not be created
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This makes sense because I don't have an F: drive. However, I'm unable to configure it in the <code>portal-ext.properties</code> file as explained <a href="http://www.liferay.com/documentation/liferay-portal/6.0/administration/-/ai/advanced-liferay-configurati-4" rel="nofollow">here</a>. When I log into the Liferay control panel, and look under Portal Administration -> Portal Properties, I can see that the value I put in <code>ext.properties</code> is indeed displayed as the value for <code>auto.deploy.deploy.dir</code>. However, when the server starts up, it is using <code>F:\liferay-portal-ee-6.0\deploy</code> as the auto deploy directory and logging the error above. I have debugged the <code>GlobalStartupAction</code> class which initializes Liferay's auto deploy and I can see that it's calling <code>PrefsPropsUtil.getString(String, String)</code> to retrieve the value for the auto deploy directory and it's passing the value I set in <code>portal-ext.properties</code> as the second argument, according to the <a href="http://docs.liferay.com/portal/6.0/javadocs/com/liferay/portal/util/PrefsPropsUtil.html" rel="nofollow">PrefsPropsUtil Java doc</a> the second argument is a default value.  When I dig down into the <code>PrefsPropsUtil.getString</code> call I can see that it's using an instance of <code>PortalPreferencesLocalServiceImpl</code> to retrieve a list of properties by <code>companyId</code>, <code>ownerId</code> and <code>ownerType</code> which are set to 0, 0 and 1 respectively.  Since the <code>PortalPreferencesLocalServiceImpl</code> is "local" I'm assuming it's not going to a different machine to retrieve values.  I've done extensive directory and file searching for references to <code>auto.deploy.deploy.dir</code> and values like <code>F:\liferay-portal-ee-6.0</code> and I'm unable to fine where this property is getting set. Where is this value coming from and why isn't my override being used?</p>