JDK 1.4 object locking -- "Object is too large to process. Lock failed"?

Folks:

The code I'm using is pretty simple ...

FileLock lock = null;
File lockFile = null;
                
// make sure another instance of the server isn't running
try {
        lockFile = new File(LOCK_FILE);
        if (!lockFile.exists()) {
                lockFile.createNewFile();
        }
        lock = new FileOutputStream(lockFile).getChannel().tryLock();
} catch (IOException e) {
        String msg = MessageFormat.format(MC.getMessage("LOCK_ERR"),
                new String[] { e.getMessage() });
        System.err.println(msg);
        e.printStackTrace(System.err);
        System.exit(ALREADY_RUNNING_EXIT);
}

Any suggestions on what could be going wrong?

Thanks!

david