Liferay gives a StackOverFlow error when trying to access the homepage

Question

I am trying to start Liferay. It was working a few weeks ago. When I enter localhost:8080 I get a 404 error.

Here is the stack trace, where the error occurs. Does anyone have any ideas regarding how to fix this. I am using Liferay Portal 5.2.2 and Tomcat 5.5

08:07:46,919 ERROR [ContextLoader:220] Context initialization failed
java.lang.StackOverflowError at java.lang.ClassLoader.findBootstrapClass(Native Method)at 
java.lang.ClassLoader.findBootstrapClass0(ClassLoader.java:891) at 
java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:301) at 
java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:299) at 
sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:268) at 
java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:251) at 
java.net.URL.getURLStreamHandler(URL.java:1141) at java.net.URL.(URL.java:572) at 
java.net.URL.(URL.java:464) at 
sun.misc.URLClassPath$FileLoader.getResource(URLClassPath.java:883) at 
sun.misc.URLClassPath$FileLoader.findResource(URLClassPath.java:872) at 
sun.misc.URLClassPath.findResource(URLClassPath.java:142) at 
java.net.URLClassLoader$2.run(URLClassLoader.java:362) at 
java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at 
java.net.URLClassLoader.findResource(URLClassLoader.java:359) at 
java.lang.ClassLoader.getResource(ClassLoader.java:977) at 
java.lang.ClassLoader.getResource(ClassLoader.java:972) at 
org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.getResource(WebappClassL oader.java:1123) at 
org.apache.commons.configuration.ConfigurationUtils.locateFromClasspa 
th(ConfigurationUtils.java:531) at 
org.apache.commons.configuration.ConfigurationUtils.locate(Configurat ionUtils.java:513) at 
org.apache.commons.configuration.AbstractFileConfiguration.load(Abstr actFileConfiguration.java:211) at

Answer 1

It might be this issue, fixed in the current trunk. The subversion commit information is also included in Jira, so you can apply the same patch to your code. (see the fisheye information in the issuetracker)

Otherwise (and if splattne's link didn't help) we'll need more information:

• What database is involved?
• Is this exception upon server start or on access to localhost:8080 ?
• What happens if you use a fresh installation (with your customizations, most likely in liferay's portal-ext.properties, also with the required database driver)
• Can you give more stacktrace information? I expect it to be prohibitively long, but a bit more information for localizing the root cause would be good.
• Did you try the Liferay forums? There might be more people hanging around there with in-depth Liferay knowledge than here (no pun intended).

Answer 2

This forum thread on liferay.com could contain a hint hwo to solve this issue:

http://www.liferay.com/web/guest/community/forums/-/message_boards/message/2436518

I removed my portal-ext.properties and changed my DB setting directly in portal-impl.jar and now I am no longer seeing this issue.