Websphere 8.5 - JSF webapp context init error: cleanupInitMaps

Question

I have got a JSF 2.1 web application developed with mojarra 2.1.17 distibution which run with any problems on JBoss 6.1 container: now i have to change application server and I have to use websphere AS 8.5 which were born with MyFaces JSF 2 distibution. I'm trying to deploy and start my webapp ignoring MyFaces and using Mojarra, configuring my EAR as IBM official guide shows, configuring shared lib with mojarra dist included, link it to a new classloader created exclusively for my server1 instance of WAS 8.5. It doesn't work at all and when I deploy my webapp i get this stacktrace when WAS try to start the application:

com.ibm.ws.exception.RuntimeWarning: com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.exception.WebAppNotLoadedException: Failed to load webapp: Failed to load webapp: null
        at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.component.WebContainerImpl.install(WebContainerImpl.java:432)
        at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.component.WebContainerImpl.start(WebContainerImpl.java:718)
        at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.ApplicationMgrImpl.start(ApplicationMgrImpl.java:1175)
        at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.DeployedApplicationImpl.fireDeployedObjectStart(DeployedApplicationImpl.java:1370)
        at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.DeployedModuleImpl.start(DeployedModuleImpl.java:639)
        at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.DeployedApplicationImpl.start(DeployedApplicationImpl.java:968)
        at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.ApplicationMgrImpl.startApplication(ApplicationMgrImpl.java:774)
        at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.ApplicationMgrImpl.start(ApplicationMgrImpl.java:2182)
        at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.CompositionUnitMgrImpl.start(CompositionUnitMgrImpl.java:445)
        at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.CompositionUnitImpl.start(CompositionUnitImpl.java:123)
        at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.CompositionUnitMgrImpl.start(CompositionUnitMgrImpl.java:388)
        at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.CompositionUnitMgrImpl.access$500(CompositionUnitMgrImpl.java:116)
        at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.CompositionUnitMgrImpl$CUInitializer.run(CompositionUnitMgrImpl.java:994)
        at com.ibm.wsspi.runtime.component.WsComponentImpl$_AsynchInitializer.run(WsComponentImpl.java:502)
        at com.ibm.ws.util.ThreadPool$Worker.run(ThreadPool.java:1862)
    Caused by: com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.exception.WebAppNotLoadedException: Failed to load webapp: Failed to load webapp: null
        at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.WSWebContainer.addWebApp(WSWebContainer.java:759)
        at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.WSWebContainer.addWebApplication(WSWebContainer.java:634)
        at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.component.WebContainerImpl.install(WebContainerImpl.java:426)
        ... 14 more
    Caused by: com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.exception.WebAppNotLoadedException: Failed to load webapp: null
        at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.VirtualHostImpl.addWebApplication(VirtualHostImpl.java:176)
        at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.WSWebContainer.addWebApp(WSWebContainer.java:749)
        ... 16 more
    Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
        at com.sun.faces.config.InitFacesContext.cleanupInitMaps(InitFacesContext.java:283)
        at com.sun.faces.config.InitFacesContext.<init>(InitFacesContext.java:107)
        at com.sun.faces.config.FacesInitializer.onStartup(FacesInitializer.java:115)
        at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebAppImpl.initializeServletContainerInitializers(WebAppImpl.java:613)
        at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebAppImpl.initialize(WebAppImpl.java:409)
        at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebGroupImpl.addWebApplication(WebGroupImpl.java:88)
        at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.VirtualHostImpl.addWebApplication(VirtualHostImpl.java:169)
        ... 17 more

I debugged cleanupInitMaps() method of mojarra dist too and i saw that it tries to get two Map of kind of variable from FacesContext called threadInitContext and initContextServletContext but gets null:

Field threadMap = FacesContext.class.getDeclaredField("threadInitContext");
and 
Field initContextMap = FacesContext.class.getDeclaredField("initContextServletContext");

How is this caused and how can I solve it?

Answer 1

Ok, i solved it !! first of all i set classloader of my server instance to PARENT_LAST + restart. Then i followed these steps: 1) put Mojarra lib into simple shared library; 2) deploy ear with jsf web module inside and before start application from console, i linked shared lib to it and to all modules inside ear; 3) i set application classloader to PARENT_LAST; 4) start app and it works !!

That's all !!

Answer 2

I faced the very same issue. In my case problem was solved by removing javax.faces dependency from .war artifact. It seems to be a conflict between javax.faces implementation by WS and dependency in my .war file. If you using maven then you can set scope for youre javax.faces dependency somthing like this:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.glassfish</groupId>
        <artifactId>javax.faces</artifactId>
        <version>2.2.13</version>
        <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>

See also: Nullpointer exception at com.sun.faces.config.InitFacesContext.cleanupInitMaps