class path resource [java/lang/Object.class] cannot be opened because it does not exist

Question

I am having a strange issue with a Spring web application. This is from the Tomcat log:

GRAVE: Exception lors de l'envoi de l'évènement contexte initialisé (context initialized) à l'instance de classe d'écoute (listener) org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanDefinitionStoreException: Failed to load bean class: com.jverstry.Configuration.WebConfig; nested exception is java.io.FileNotFoundException: class path resource [java/lang/Object.class] cannot be opened because it does not exist
    at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassPostProcessor.processConfigBeanDefinitions(ConfigurationClassPostProcessor.java:267)
    at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassPostProcessor.postProcessBeanDefinitionRegistry(ConfigurationClassPostProcessor.java:203)
    at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.invokeBeanFactoryPostProcessors(AbstractApplicationContext.java:622)
    at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:451)
    at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.configureAndRefreshWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:383)
    at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.initWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:283)
    at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener.contextInitialized(ContextLoaderListener.java:111)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStart(StandardContext.java:4791)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5285)
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
    at org.apache.catalina.manager.ManagerServlet.start(ManagerServlet.java:1247)
    at org.apache.catalina.manager.HTMLManagerServlet.start(HTMLManagerServlet.java:714)
    at org.apache.catalina.manager.HTMLManagerServlet.doPost(HTMLManagerServlet.java:219)
    at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:641)
    at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:722)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:305)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:210)
    at org.apache.catalina.filters.CsrfPreventionFilter.doFilter(CsrfPreventionFilter.java:186)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:243)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:210)
    at org.apache.catalina.filters.SetCharacterEncodingFilter.doFilter(SetCharacterEncodingFilter.java:108)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:243)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:210)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:225)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:123)
    at org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:581)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:168)
    at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:98)
    at org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve.invoke(AccessLogValve.java:927)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:118)
    at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:407)
    at org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process(AbstractHttp11Processor.java:1001)
    at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:585)
    at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.AprEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(AprEndpoint.java:1770)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Caused by: java.io.FileNotFoundException: class path resource [java/lang/Object.class] cannot be opened because it does not exist
    at org.springframework.core.io.ClassPathResource.getInputStream(ClassPathResource.java:157)
    at org.springframework.core.type.classreading.SimpleMetadataReader.<init>(SimpleMetadataReader.java:49)
    at org.springframework.core.type.classreading.SimpleMetadataReaderFactory.getMetadataReader(SimpleMetadataReaderFactory.java:80)
    at org.springframework.core.type.classreading.CachingMetadataReaderFactory.getMetadataReader(CachingMetadataReaderFactory.java:101)
    at org.springframework.core.type.classreading.SimpleMetadataReaderFactory.getMetadataReader(SimpleMetadataReaderFactory.java:76)
    at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassParser.doProcessConfigurationClass(ConfigurationClassParser.java:257)
    at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassParser.processConfigurationClass(ConfigurationClassParser.java:149)
    at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassParser.parse(ConfigurationClassParser.java:126)
    at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassParser.doProcessConfigurationClass(ConfigurationClassParser.java:219)
    at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassParser.processConfigurationClass(ConfigurationClassParser.java:149)
    at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassParser.parse(ConfigurationClassParser.java:126)
    at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassPostProcessor.processConfigBeanDefinitions(ConfigurationClassPostProcessor.java:263)
    ... 36 more
16-sept.-2012 15:51:56 org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationContext log
INFO: Closing Spring root WebApplicationContext

I have seen similar questions on SO, but none related to java/lang/Object.class. I hae no idea what is causing this.

This is my web.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="2.5" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd">

    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextClass</param-name>
        <param-value>org.springframework.web.context.support.AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext</param-value>
    </context-param>

    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>com.jverstry.Configuration</param-value>
    </context-param>

    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
    </listener>

    <filter>
      <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
      <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy</filter-class>
    </filter>

    <filter-mapping>
      <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
      <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </filter-mapping>

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>mytest</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
            <param-value></param-value>
        </init-param>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/mytest/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

    <welcome-file-list>
        <welcome-file></welcome-file>
    </welcome-file-list>

</web-app>

Here is my WebConfig class:

@EnableWebMvc
@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = {"com.jverstry", "org.krams"})
@ImportResource("WEB-INF/spring-security.xml")
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

    @Bean
    public ViewResolver getViewResolver() {

        InternalResourceViewResolver resolver
            = new InternalResourceViewResolver();
        resolver.setPrefix("WEB-INF/pages/");
        resolver.setSuffix(".jsp");

        return resolver;

    }

}

Answer 1

That is most peculiar.

Lets start with the what we do know. The class java.lang.Object and the corresponding java/lang/Object.class file most certainly do exist. If they didn't then is is highly unlikely that the JVM would have started in the first place.

So how come you get the exception?

My theory it that somewhere in your codebase (or the libraries you are using) there is a classloader that is breaking the rules. When it is asked to load a resource, a well behaved class loader will first delegate up the class loader chain to see if its parent classloader can load the resource. I suspect that what is happening is that the broken classloader is skipping the delegation step and just trying to load the resource itself. If the "rt.jar" is not on its list of JARs, etc (and it normally won't be) then the class loader won't find the Object.class file ... and you will get a FileNotFoundException.

---

UPDATE

I think I understand. If your Java installation was corrupted to the extent that it couldn't load java.lang.Object, then the JVM wouldn't boot. And if it had already booted before the corruption, then it wouldn't be trying to load the Object class.

But it is not trying to do that. It is actually trying to read the Object.class file. And the stacktrace seem to be saying that this is occurring in Spring's annotation processing code.

So I think that something has triggered a servlet restart after the Java installation was compromised. And the restart caused the spring configuration to be done again. Why it worked when you rebooted is a mystery ... unless the problem was due to a hardware error or stuck device driver that was cleared by the reboot.

(The post you found describes a different scenario ... where the JVM fail during its bootstrap. Your scenario is more complicated.)

Answer 2

It turns out my JRE6 installation was somehow corrupted. I reinstalled it manually and now I don't have an issue anymore. I have also found another post which might explain why the issue would disappear after rebooting.