Random unreproducable Tomcat error of the day
I just tried to start Tomcat and it refused to start because of the following error:
log4j:ERROR Error occured while converting date. java.lang.NullPointerException at java.lang.System.arraycopy(Native Method) at java.lang.AbstractStringBuilder.getChars at java.lang.StringBuffer.getChars at org.apache.log4j.helpers.ISO8601DateFormat.format at java.text.DateFormat.format ... at org.apache.log4j.Category.log at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Log4JLogger.error ... at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.LeaderFollowerWorkerThread.runIt at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.ThreadPool$ControlRunnable.run at java.lang.Thread.run log4j:ERROR Error occured while converting date.
So I just hit started it again, and this time it starts without error.
And people trust their mission-critical server architecture to this stuff!
Update: Since writing this article I've changed to using Jetty and have left this sort of error behind me
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