Error creating bean with name 'pluginManager' defined in ServletContext resource

[jakkarth]

Using version 0.8.7-hotfix1, Tomcat 7.0.94

I'm seeing a crash on startup:

tomcat_1 | 2019-06-11 22:21:42,904 [localhost-startStop-1] ERROR context.ContextLoader - Context initialization failed
tomcat_1 | org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'pluginManager' defined in ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]: Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method getAt() on null object
tomcat_1 | at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:511)
tomcat_1 | at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
tomcat_1 | at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1149)
tomcat_1 | at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624)
tomcat_1 | at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)
tomcat_1 | Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method getAt() on null object

Application is not accessible.

[jmiranda]

Thanks. This is a build issue I've seen in the past, but have no idea why it happens. I'll check the war file and rebuild if necessary. I should be able to get this done tonight or early tomorrow.

I'll also try to add a validation step (similar to the one in this bash script) to our CI pipeline to avoid this in the future. https://github.com/openboxes/openboxes-docker/blob/master/openboxes-run.sh

[jmiranda]

@jakkarth Actually, this is not a Grails build error. I downloaded the openboxes.war from the Release page and found that the applicationContext.xml is, in fact, there.

$ jar -xvf openboxes.war | grep applicationContext
 inflated: WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml

I think this is the error one encounters when you're using a version of Tomcat compiled with Java 8 or when you're running Java 8 on your machine. However, this seems odd since you're using docker and should be pointing to the right images. Has anything changed in your environment recently?

[jakkarth]

I did upgrade to a new version of Tomcat 7, but it's 7.0.94, still a 7 version just like I was running before. I've just rolled back to 7.0.93 and it works again. Rolling forward to 7.0.94 results in the error returning. I'm not well versed enough in Tomcat to understand what the differences are.

[jmiranda]

Yeah it depends on who is maintaining that docker image, I guess. I see on Docker Hub (https://hub.docker.com/_/tomcat) that the same image was tagged as 7.0.94-jdk8, 7.0-jdk8, 7-jdk8, 7.0.94, 7.0, 7 (7/jdk8/Dockerfile). So I think it's safe to say that one is compiled with jdk8. Try 7.0.94-jdk7 to see if that fixes it.

[jmiranda]

Maybe this one 7.0.94-jre7-alpine?

[jakkarth]

7.0.94-jre7-alpine seems to work ok. I didn't realize that the tomcat version wasn't tied to the jre version, but I guess that makes sense. I'll stick with this and keep an eye on the jre version in the future. Thanks.