Runlist emptied on adding multiple recipes

The runlist is empty when multiple roles or recipes to my node. I've tried below things so far -

  1. Added a role with multiple recipes/role JServerBTool.rb -
    name "JServerBTool"
    description "Combined role for JServer and BTool features"
    run_list "role[JServer]","role[BTool]"

  2. Added multiple roles in first-boot.json -
    {
    "run_list": [
    "role[JServer]",
    "role[BTool]"
    ],
    "chef_environment": "qa"
    }

  3. Tried including the recipe directly like -
    include_recipe 'JServer::default'

But everytime it fails with "WARN: Node nodename has an empty run list."

I've spent weeks now trying to fix this but not luck. I relatively new to chef. Any help is highly appreciated.

Thanks,
Altaf B.

Which version of Chef are you using? How are you running the chef-client, which command-line options? Do you have anything in your client.rb? Are the roles JServer and BTool on the Chef server?