We have an incremental multi module maven build set up, that behaves correctly when running the build on the top level project.

However, when drilling into a specific module within the project, and running the build from there, the build aborts immediately, with the build's console output showing:

Started by user anonymous
ERROR: Ignore Problem expanding maven opts macros org.jenkinsci.plugins.tokenmacro.TokenMacro
$ /opt/apps/java_home/bin/java -Xmx512m -cp /opt/apps/jenkins_home/plugins/maven-plugin/WEB-INF/lib/maven3-agent-1.2.jar:/opt/apps/maven_home/boot/plexus-classworlds-2.4.jar org.jvnet.hudson.maven3.agent.Maven3Main /opt/apps/maven_home /opt/apps/web/tomcat-8080/webapps/jenkins/WEB-INF/lib/remoting-1.418.jar /opt/apps/jenkins_home/plugins/maven-plugin/WEB-INF/lib/maven3-interceptor-1.2.jar 51579
<===[JENKINS REMOTING CAPACITY]===>channel started
Finished: ABORTED

On enabling the jenkins system logger, I can see the below when executing the build:

01-Aug-2011 17:32:46 hudson.remoting.Channel$ReaderThread run
SEVERE: I/O error in channel Channel to Maven [/opt/apps/java_home/bin/java, -Xmx512m, -cp, /opt/apps/jenkins_home/plugins/maven-plugin/WEB-INF/lib/maven3-agent-1.2.jar:/opt/apps/maven_home/boot/plexus-classworlds-2.4.jar, org.jvnet.hudson.maven3.agent.Maven3Main, /opt/apps/maven_home, /opt/apps/web/tomcat-8080/webapps/jenkins/WEB-INF/lib/remoting-1.418.jar, /opt/apps/jenkins_home/plugins/maven-plugin/WEB-INF/lib/maven3-interceptor-1.2.jar, 51579]
java.io.IOException: Unexpected termination of the channel
at hudson.remoting.Channel$ReaderThread.run(Channel.java:1025)
Caused by: java.io.EOFException
at java.io.ObjectInputStream$BlockDataInputStream.peekByte(ObjectInputStream.java:2553)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1296)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(ObjectInputStream.java:350)
at hudson.remoting.Channel$ReaderThread.run(Channel.java:1019)
01-Aug-2011 17:32:46 hudson.remoting.Channel$ReaderThread run
FINE: Received Response[retVal=hudson.remoting.UserResponse@242aeeeb,exception=null]
01-Aug-2011 17:32:46 hudson.remoting.Channel send
FINE: Send Response[retVal=hudson.remoting.RemoteClassLoader$ClassFile@5264a7cb,exception=null]
01-Aug-2011 17:32:46 hudson.remoting.Channel$ReaderThread run
FINE: Received RPCRequest(2,fetch2)
01-Aug-2011 17:32:46 hudson.remoting.Channel send
FINE: Send UserRequest:hudson.maven.ProcessCache$GetSystemProperties@1ece1486

There are no pending changes on the module being built, but I would expect Jenkins to run a build for this module when explicitly requested to do so.