Null Pointer Error when backing up Crowd

Question

When I try to backup crowd to an xml file I get a null pointer error.

com.atlassian.crowd.migration.userMapper.addUserToXml (userMapper.java:87)

I have check the database and there doesn't seem to be any null users, so why am I getting a null pointer error?

JustinK · Answer

I am assuming that you are using a delegated LDAP directory, so all auth will happen against LDAP and not against the local database.

Putting no 'nopass' into the credential column would be fine, since it will never be used for auth and that column expects an encrypted value, so nothing will every evaluate to 'nopass'.

You have actually hit https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CWD-2284 which was fixed in 2.2.1 of Crowd.

As with any database change, I would recommend taking a backup of the database before doing this change.

Cheers,

Justin

john scancella1 · Answer

Justin,

There area bunch that are null. I have crowd set up to use LDAP as the authentication method. What should the credential be(I would guess "nopass" since that is what some of the others say)?

Would it be wrong to modify the null credentials in the database? Thanks for all the help

JustinK · Answer

The line in error is most likely:

userElement.addElement(USER_XML_CREDENTIAL).addText(user.getCredential().getCredential());

Meaning that a user has a null credential, yes the code could be better, and it is a lot better in later releases of Crowd. So I would check to see if a user has a credential that is null.