@dkocher commented

This looks like you have a commons-logging.jar somewere in your system classpath.

samj commented

Thanks for the prompt response. I tried unsetting CLASSPATH but to no avail:

$ unset CLASSPATH
nephologist:MacOS samj$ ./Cyberduck
Exception in thread "Background" java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
at com.mosso.client.cloudfiles.FilesClient.(FilesClient.java:103)
at com.mosso.client.cloudfiles.FilesClient.(FilesClient.java:167)
at ch.cyberduck.core.cf.CFSession.connect(CFSession.java:91)
at ch.cyberduck.core.Session.check(Session.java:93)
at ch.cyberduck.core.Session.mount(Session.java:225)
at ch.cyberduck.core.Session.mount(Session.java:208)
at ch.cyberduck.ui.cocoa.CDBrowserController$34$1.run(CDBrowserController.java:3744)
at ch.cyberduck.ui.cocoa.CDWindowController$1.run(CDWindowController.java:77)
Caused by: org.apache.commons.logging.LogConfigurationException: org.apache.commons.logging.LogConfigurationException: No suitable Log constructor [Ljava.lang.Class;@d7bd04 for org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Log4JLogger (Caused by java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/log4j/Category) (Caused by org.apache.commons.logging.LogConfigurationException: No suitable Log constructor [Ljava.lang.Class;@d7bd04 for org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Log4JLogger (Caused by java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/log4j/Category))
at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl.newInstance(LogFactoryImpl.java:543)
at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl.getInstance(LogFactoryImpl.java:235)
at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl.getInstance(LogFactoryImpl.java:209)
at org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory.getLog(LogFactory.java:351)
at org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpClient.(HttpClient.java:66)
... 8 more
Caused by: org.apache.commons.logging.LogConfigurationException: No suitable Log constructor [Ljava.lang.Class;@d7bd04 for org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Log4JLogger (Caused by java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/log4j/Category)
at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl.getLogConstructor(LogFactoryImpl.java:413)
at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl.newInstance(LogFactoryImpl.java:529)
... 12 more
Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/log4j/Category
at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredConstructors0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredConstructors(Class.java:2357)
at java.lang.Class.getConstructor0(Class.java:2671)
at java.lang.Class.getConstructor(Class.java:1629)
at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl.getLogConstructor(LogFactoryImpl.java:410)
... 13 more

I've also tried to find commons-logging.jar but to no avail:

$ locate commons-logging.jar
/Applications/Adobe Flash CS4/Common/Configuration/ActionScript 3.0/commons-logging.jar
/Applications/Protege_4.0_beta/configuration/org.eclipse.osgi/bundles/3/1/.cp/lib/commons-logging.jar
/Applications/eclipse/plugins/com.amazonaws.eclipse.datatools.enablement.simpledb.driver_1.0.0.v200907221402/lib/commons-logging-1.0.4/commons-logging.jar
/Applications/eclipse/plugins/com.amazonaws.eclipse.ec2_1.0.0.v200907221402/lib/commons-logging-1.0.4/commons-logging.jar
/Applications/eclipse/plugins/org.apache.ant_1.7.1.v20090120-1145/lib/ant-commons-logging.jar
/Applications/oxygen/tools/ant/lib/ant-commons-logging.jar
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Version Cue CS4/Server/plugins/org.apache.commons_4.0.0/lib/commons-logging.jar
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Version Cue CS4/Server/vcsync_client/lib/commons-logging.jar
$ ls -la /System/Library/Java/Extensions/
total 37632
drwxr-xr-x 21 root wheel 714 Jun 19 02:20 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 root wheel 170 Sep 20 2008 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 6283 May 6 19:18 AppleScriptEngine.jar
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 127216 May 31 2008 CoreAudio.jar
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 12835 May 25 23:16 MRJToolkit.jar
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 935180 May 28 03:40 QTJava.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 17045 Oct 1 2008 dns_sd.jar
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1245588 May 31 2008 j3daudio.jar
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1340102 May 31 2008 j3dcore.jar
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 789164 May 31 2008 j3dutils.jar
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 328952 May 31 2008 jai_codec.jar
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1893836 May 31 2008 jai_core.jar
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 175152 May 6 19:18 libAppleScriptEngine.jnilib
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 409568 May 31 2008 libJ3D.jnilib
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 724880 May 31 2008 libJ3DAudio.jnilib
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 54768 May 31 2008 libJ3DUtils.jnilib
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 948016 May 28 03:44 libQTJNative.jnilib
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 146144 Apr 14 06:27 libShark.jnilib
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 9875120 May 31 2008 libmlib_jai.jnilib
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 41239 May 31 2008 mlibwrapper_jai.jar
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 153874 May 31 2008 vecmath.jar
$ ls -la ~/Library/Java/Extensions/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 samj staff 68 Apr 10 12:00 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 samj staff 102 Apr 10 12:00 ..

Would this not imply that I don't have a commons-logging.jar? I'm no Java guru but it says: NoClassDefFoundError.

@dkocher commented

Replying to [comment:2 samj]:

Would this not imply that I don't have a commons-logging.jar? I'm no Java guru but it says: NoClassDefFoundError.

From what I know there must be a commons-logging.jar in the system classpath loaded by the parent classloader. But log4j and commons-logging must be loaded by the same application class loader.

samj commented

Ok I'll see what I can find. BTW I'd make a donation but my PayPal account was just suspended because I accessed it from my iPhone!?!?!

Will be in Zürich on and off from next month so maybe I can buy you a beer or something...

Sam

@dkocher commented

Replying to [comment:4 samj]:

Ok I'll see what I can find. BTW I'd make a donation but my PayPal account was just suspended because I accessed it from my iPhone!?!?!

Will be in Zürich on and off from next month so maybe I can buy you a beer or something...

Sam

You could probably find out by looking at Open Files in Activity Monitor.app → View → Inspect Process. Do you plan to visit Bern?

samj commented

Will have a rail pass so yeah, why not?

Reinstalled Snow Leopard from scratch so things are (or at least were) working again.

Sam

samj commented

OK so the problem was that I had commons-logging-1.0.4.jar in /Library/Java/Extensions. Removing it allows Cyberduck to start but breaks other Java applications on my system. I did find however that downloading log4j from http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/index.html and installing both commons-logging-1.0.4.jar and log4j-1.2.15.jar into /Library/Java/Extensions. That is to say it appears to be ok if you have commons-logging in your Java path provided you also have log4j?

Note that it's a difficult problem to diagnose - initially Cyberduck would just crash on launch but then more recent versions I could see e.g. Amazon S3 connections but attempts to open them were silently ignored (unless I opened a terminal, ran /Applications/Cyberduck.app/Contents/MacOS/Cyberduck directly and watched for the errors on the command line. As I said, not a Java guru but I do wonder whether this condition couldn't be better handled (e.g. with a sensible error?).

@dkocher commented

Replying to [comment:8 samj]:

OK so the problem was that I had commons-logging-1.0.4.jar in /Library/Java/Extensions. Removing it allows Cyberduck to start but breaks other Java applications on my system. I did find however that downloading log4j from http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/index.html and installing both commons-logging-1.0.4.jar and log4j-1.2.15.jar into /Library/Java/Extensions. That is to say it appears to be ok if you have commons-logging in your Java path provided you also have log4j?

Thanks for your anlysis on this. Commons-Logging is known for its problems with different classloaders and its dynamic lookup of log implementations. It might act differently if you place a newer version of commons-logging jar into the Extensions directory.

Note that it's a difficult problem to diagnose - initially Cyberduck would just crash on launch but then more recent versions I could see e.g. Amazon S3 connections but attempts to open them were silently ignored (unless I opened a terminal, ran /Applications/Cyberduck.app/Contents/MacOS/Cyberduck directly and watched for the errors on the command line. As I said, not a Java guru but I do wonder whether this condition couldn't be better handled (e.g. with a sensible error?).

Yes, we would need to catch these runtime exceptions which we currently do not as they are usually recoverable from.