How to solve java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError?

Question

I\'ve tried both the example in Oracle\'s Java Tutorials. They both compile fine, but at run-time, both come up with this error:

Exception in thread \"main\"         


        

Answer 1

This answer is specific to a java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError happening in a service:

My team recently saw this error after upgrading an rpm that supplied a service. The rpm and the software inside of it had been built with Maven, so it seemed that we had a compile time dependency that had just not gotten included in the rpm.

However, when investigating, the class that was not found was in the same module as several of the classes in the stack trace. Furthermore, this was not a module that had only been recently added to the build. These facts indicated it might not be a Maven dependency issue.

The eventual solution: Restart the service!

It appears that the rpm upgrade invalidated the service's file handle on the underlying jar file. The service then saw a class that had not been loaded into memory, searched for it among its list of jar file handles, and failed to find it because the file handle that it could load the class from had been invalidated. Restarting the service forced it to reload all of its file handles, which then allowed it to load that class that had not been found in memory right after the rpm upgrade.

Hope that specific case helps someone.