Tomcat suddenly throwing a ClassFormatError on startup

Question

I'm having an issue with my project and after some testing I don't think it's source related. Even when going back to a previously working revision I still get an error when I try to deploy to Tomcat.

The error is a org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanDefinitionStoreException caused by a java.lang.ClassFormatError with the message Truncated class file.

I've started narrowing down the issue by remove Eclipse from equation but even when using a maven command line build and deploying directly to my tomcat instance I still get the same issue. Googling for the error came up with people suggesting clearing the tomcat work and temp directory, which I did with no luck.

I know this isn't a lot of information, but assuming the issue isn't with my code, which changes to my system could cause this issue to suddenly manifest?

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Stack trace

Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanDefinitionStoreException: Unexpected exception parsing XML document from class path resource [beans.xml]; nested exception is java.lang.ClassFormatError: Truncated class file
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader.doLoadBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java:412)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java:334)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java:302)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.java:174)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.java:209)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.DefaultBeanDefinitionDocumentReader.importBeanDefinitionResource(DefaultBeanDefinitionDocumentReader.java:239)
    ... 54 more
Caused by: java.lang.ClassFormatError: Truncated class file
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClassCond(ClassLoader.java:631)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:615)
    at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:141)
    at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.findClassInternal(WebappClassLoader.java:1847)
    at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.findClass(WebappClassLoader.java:890)
    at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1354)
    at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1233)
    at org.apache.xbean.spring.context.v2c.XBeanQNameHelper.loadClass(XBeanQNameHelper.java:102)
    at org.apache.xbean.spring.context.v2c.XBeanQNameHelper.getBeanInfo(XBeanQNameHelper.java:72)
    at org.apache.xbean.spring.context.v2c.XBeanNamespaceHandler.getPropertyDescriptor(XBeanNamespaceHandler.java:581)
    at org.apache.xbean.spring.context.v2c.XBeanNamespaceHandler.addAttributeProperties(XBeanNamespaceHandler.java:333)
    at org.apache.xbean.spring.context.v2c.XBeanNamespaceHandler.parseBeanFromExtensionElement(XBeanNamespaceHandler.java:225)
    at org.apache.xbean.spring.context.v2c.XBeanNamespaceHandler.parseBeanFromExtensionElement(XBeanNamespaceHandler.java:276)
    at org.apache.xbean.spring.context.v2c.XBeanNamespaceHandler.parse(XBeanNamespaceHandler.java:156)
    at org.apache.xbean.spring.context.v2.XBeanNamespaceHandler.parse(XBeanNamespaceHandler.java:49)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.BeanDefinitionParserDelegate.parseCustomElement(BeanDefinitionParserDelegate.java:1419)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.BeanDefinitionParserDelegate.parseCustomElement(BeanDefinitionParserDelegate.java:1409)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.DefaultBeanDefinitionDocumentReader.parseBeanDefinitions(DefaultBeanDefinitionDocumentReader.java:184)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.DefaultBeanDefinitionDocumentReader.doRegisterBeanDefinitions(DefaultBeanDefinitionDocumentReader.java:140)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.DefaultBeanDefinitionDocumentReader.registerBeanDefinitions(DefaultBeanDefinitionDocumentReader.java:111)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader.registerBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java:493)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader.doLoadBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java:390)
    ... 59 more

Answer 1

It looks like one of the class files is corrupted, but the problem is finding which one.

One way to debug this is to use eclipse's break on exception feature. Start tomcat so that it waits for a debugger to attach before running, then break on the java.lang.ClassFormatError being thrown, and look around the local variables and the stack in eclipse to see which class is failing to load.

Answer 2

If you are running JSPs simply go into your TOMCAT_HOME/work/Catalina/localhost/ directory, look for the name of your webapp, cd into that and go all the way down the directory tree from there until you find the JSP class files.. sudo rm -f * and try again.

No need to reinstall everything or rebuild anything, nothing you did was corrupt.. sometimes the compiler gets confused.