IntelliJ 2019 throwing java.lang.NullPointerException error

Question

I'm running IntelliJ 2019.1, deploying app to a local Websphere server v8.5.5. My app had been working up to this point - able to build artifacts/projects and deploy to local server, either selecting to Run or Debug. But now am getting the error "Error running admin process:

Message: java.lang.NullPointerException Stack trace: com.intellij.javaee.process.common.JavaeeProcessUtilException: java.lang.NullPointerException at com.intellij.javaee.process.common.MethodInvocator.invoke(MethodInvocator.java:47) at com.intellij.javaee.oss.process.JavaeeProcess.processRequest(JavaeeProcess.java:112) at com.intellij.javaee.oss.process.JavaeeProcess.run(JavaeeProcess.java:52) at com.intellij.javaee.oss.process.JavaeeProcess.main(JavaeeProcess.java:31) Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException at com.intellij.j2ee.webSphere.agent.WebSphereAgent.createClient(WebSphereAgent.java:82) at com.intellij.j2ee.webSphere.agent.WebSphereAgent.connect(WebSphereAgent.java:51) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:60) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:37) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:611) at com.intellij.javaee.process.common.MethodInvocator.invoke(MethodInvocator.java:41) ... 3 more "

I'm also seeing this error during the server startup :

[Fatal Error] :10:33: Character reference "&#21" is an invalid XML character.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Concerning the character reference, in my case the password of the debugging connection got corrupted.

The solution has been to delete this connection and create a new one. Temporarily, disabling the "Use default" checkbox has worked too, until it hasn't.