After upgrading from 7.8.2 to 7.8.3 this weekend, we were unable to deploy settings to CG and other servers. (Only ICAP settings to Protectors worked, which we don't even use.) It turned out that 7.8.3 now connects to the archive share as part of the deploy process; in addition to that, we use logonWorkstations to restrict service account access, and JCIFS uses a random string as the computer name (fixed by adding jcifs.netbios.hostname=SERVERNAME in catalina.properties, see http://jcifs.samba.org/src/docs/ntlmhttpauth.html#adpolicy).
Anyway, if the Deploy process fails, it should provide more details in the UI as to what went wrong. I had to enable debug logging to chase down the issue, which seems extreme.
Additionally, if the installer finds a config file that's been modified during an upgrade, it should notify the admin and either rename the file (so changes can be merged if needed) or merge the changes itself.
It would also have been nice to have this particular issue fixed without a workaround; I had submitted case 01623147 to determine the correct workaround.
Thanks.