Crowd XML backup failed with NPE

[Sameera Shaakunthala [inactive]]

We are currently evaluating Atlassian Crowd. When I tried to take a XML backup, a 'java.lang.NullPointerException' occured. (full stack trace: (crowd-error.txt) )

We have only one user in the crowd internal directory and no groups other than default crowd-administrators group. Also, we have one Windows Active DIrectory configured (connector - not delegated authentication).

Could you please help me to find the root cause for this?

[Caspar Krieger · Accepted solution]

I tried to reproduce this with Crowd 2.7.1 (in use by you according to your stack trace) but wasn't able to. I used the embedded database and configured Crowd to have the internal directory plus an active directory connector.

Would you please tell me what database you have Crowd connected to, and if possible run the SQL select * from cwd_directory; on your Crowd database? That stack trace seems to indicate that the description for a directory is null, so I'd be interested to see if that is actually the case.

After clarification: Ah yep, Oracle would do the trick, and as you worked out you can fix it by setting a non-empty description. Looks like another occurrence of this old Oracle quirk; CWD-3216 would be appropriate to vote on if you'd like to see this fixed.

[Sameera Shaakunthala [inactive]]

We use Oracle 11.2 . Descriptions for both directories were null.

Then I put descriptions for both, and then XML backup worked fine.

I think this is a bug in Crowd application. If description is supposed to be a required field, field validaiton must be done.

Please convert your comment to an answer so I can accept it. :)

Thank!

[Sameera Shaakunthala [inactive]]

Other information:

• No connected applications.
• Active Directory connected with cache enabled.
• This is just a basic instance.
• Crowd version: 2.7