Apache tomcat: error starting grails application

Question

I deployed the Grails war on the server on which I installed Apache Tomcat 7, but it does not start. Here is the stacktrace provided in catalina.out:

2014-07-05 12:07:55,875 [http-bio-8080-exec-53] ERROR context.ContextLoader - Context initialization failed org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'pluginManager' defined in ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]: Invo cation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method getAt() on null object at com.sun.jmx.interceptor.DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.invoke(DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.java:819) at com.sun.jmx.mbeanserver.JmxMBeanServer.invoke(JmxMBeanServer.java:801) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745) Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method getAt() on null object ... 5 more 2014-07-05 12:07:55,883 [http-bio-8080-exec-53] ERROR context.GrailsContextLoader - Error initializing the application: Error creating bean with name 'pluginManager' defined in ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]: Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method getAt() on null object org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'pluginManager' defined in ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]: Invo cation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method getAt() on null object at com.sun.jmx.interceptor.DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.invoke(DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.java:819) at com.sun.jmx.mbeanserver.JmxMBeanServer.invoke(JmxMBeanServer.java:801) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745) Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method getAt() on null object ... 5 more 2014-07-05 12:07:55,886 [http-bio-8080-exec-53] ERROR context.GrailsContextLoader - Error initializing Grails: Error creating bean with name 'pluginManager' defined in ServletC ontext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]: Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method getAt() on null obj ect org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'pluginManager' defined in ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]: Invo cation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method getAt() on null object at com.sun.jmx.interceptor.DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.invoke(DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.j ava:819) at com.sun.jmx.mbeanserver.JmxMBeanServer.invoke(JmxMBeanServer.java:801) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745) Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method getAt() on null object ... 5 more 

Any suggestion on this?

EDIT: The tomcat version in which the war does not work is 7.0.54. Earlier, I used an earlier version (7.0.26) on another machine and started the war.

Answer 1

I had the same problem trying to run the Grails 2.2.4 project on Ubuntu 16.04 beta, and, as Tomasz noted in the comment, this is a combination of the old Grails, Java 8 and later tomcat versions. And the same question as tomcat 7 and tomcat 8. I solved the problem by upgrading the Grails project to Grails 2.3.11 , which was as far as I could go without massive code refactoring. Switching to an older tomcat or Java 7 was not an option for me.