Jenkins: hudson.util.AWTProblem: java.lang.NullPointerException And Solution 📎
The following Jenkins (1.548) exception is caused by the lack of the "devel" part of the JDK.
SEVERE: Failed to initialize Jenkins
hudson.util.AWTProblem: java.lang.NullPointerException
at hudson.WebAppMain.contextInitialized(WebAppMain.java:182)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandler.callContextInitialized(ContextHandler.java:782)
at org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletContextHandler.callContextInitialized(ServletContextHandler.java:424)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandler.startContext(ContextHandler.java:774)
at org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletContextHandler.startContext(ServletContextHandler.java:249)
[...]
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at sun.awt.FontConfiguration.getVersion(FontConfiguration.java:1264)
at sun.awt.FontConfiguration.readFontConfigFile(FontConfiguration.java:219)
at sun.awt.FontConfiguration.init(FontConfiguration.java:107)
at sun.awt.X11FontManager.createFontConfiguration(X11FontManager.java:753)
at sun.font.SunFontManager$2.run(SunFontManager.java:430)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at sun.font.SunFontManager.<init>(SunFontManager.java:375)
at sun.awt.X11FontManager.<init>(X11FontManager.java:32)
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:57)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:45)
at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:408)
[...]
The problem can be mitigated by installing the full jdk. e.g.: yum -y install java-1.8.0-openjdk-devel or installing the current https://jdk8.java.net. However, the Jenkins 1.548 is using an older XStream library, which is not compatible with Java 8. If you get the following exception: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/XSTR-746 you will have to move "back" to JDK 1.7.
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