Failure to deploy grails app with cloudfoundry plugin - grails

Question

"grails cf-push" results in errors listed below. Is there a way using the cloudfoundry plugin to "start fresh". I would prefer not to lose my test data in a MySQL database and a MongoDB database.
May 18, 2012 6:31:26 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext start
SEVERE: Error listenerStart
May 18, 2012 6:31:26 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext start
SEVERE: Context [] startup failed due to previous errors
May 18, 2012 6:31:26 PM org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader clearThreadLocalMap
SEVERE: The web application [] created a ThreadLocal with key of type [org.codehaus.groovy.reflection.ClassInfo.ThreadLocalMapHandler] (value [org.codehaus.groovy.reflection.ClassInfo$ThreadLocalMapHandler#6434d75f]) and a value of type [java.lang.ref.SoftReference] (value [java.lang.ref.SoftReference#4927d15e]) but failed to remove it when the web application was stopped. This is very likely to create a memory leak.
2012-05-18 18:31:26,379 [main] ERROR context.ContextLoader - Context initialization failed
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'grailsApplication' defined in ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]: Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/http/conn/ClientConnectionManager
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1455)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:519)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:456)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory$1.getObject(AbstractBeanFactory.java:294)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.getSingleton(DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.java:225)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.doGetBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:291)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:193)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.preInstantiateSingletons(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:567)
at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.finishBeanFactoryInitialization(AbstractApplicationContext.java:913)
at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:464)
at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.configureAndRefreshWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:384)
at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.initWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:283)
at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.context.GrailsContextLoader.initWebApplicationContext(GrailsContextLoader.java:66)
at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener.contextInitialized(ContextLoaderListener.java:111)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStart(StandardContext.java:4206)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:4705)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:799)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:779)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:601)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory(HostConfig.java:1079)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectories(HostConfig.java:1002)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployApps(HostConfig.java:506)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.start(HostConfig.java:1317)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.lifecycleEvent(HostConfig.java:324)
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:142)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1065)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.start(StandardHost.java:840)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1057)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine.start(StandardEngine.java:463)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.start(StandardService.java:525)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer.start(StandardServer.java:754)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start(Catalina.java:595)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.start(Bootstrap.java:289)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:414)
Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/http/conn/ClientConnectionManager
at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:169)
at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:247)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.http.conn.ClientConnectionManager
... 2 more
Stopping Tomcat because the context stopped.
stderr.log is :
May 18, 2012 6:41:00 PM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol init
INFO: Initializing Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-31903
May 18, 2012 6:41:00 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina load
INFO: Initialization processed in 403 ms
May 18, 2012 6:41:00 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.JAASRealm setContainer
INFO: Set JAAS app name Catalina
May 18, 2012 6:41:00 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService start
INFO: Starting service Catalina
May 18, 2012 6:41:00 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine start
INFO: Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/6.0.35
May 18, 2012 6:41:00 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployDirectory
INFO: Deploying web application directory ROOT
May 18, 2012 6:41:02 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext start
SEVERE: Error listenerStart
May 18, 2012 6:41:02 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext start
SEVERE: Context [] startup failed due to previous errors
May 18, 2012 6:41:02 PM org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader clearThreadLocalMap
SEVERE: The web application [] created a ThreadLocal with key of type [org.codehaus.groovy.reflection.ClassInfo.ThreadLocalMapHandler] (value org.codehaus.groovy.reflection.ClassInfo$ThreadLocalMapHandler#6d1576d7]) and a value of type [java.lang.ref.SoftReference] (value [java.lang.ref.SoftReference#1c2d5534]) but failed to remove it when the web application was stopped. This is very likely to create a memory leak.

Answer 1

If you do cf-update or delete the app and re-run cf-push, it will ask you if you want to use the existing MySQL and Mongo services. If you do there isn't any data loss - just don't delete the services along with the app before re-running cf-push.
Make sure you're using 'grails prod cf-push' since that will use the production configuration - there is a warning displayed if you run 'grails cf-push' to that effect.
The root cause is a CNFE from the HttpClient library. See if you can get it working locally and it should work fine on Cloud Foundry since you're just pushing a war file.

Answer 2

I found the problem. I added a service that used an external jar from a third party package. The third party package shipped with 2 jars: one with dependencies and one without dependencies. I extracted the 3rd party zip into my classpath, but only included the one without dependencies in my lib directory. When I switched to using the jar with dependencies, the app deployed.The following things made this simple problem difficult to resolve:the error logs simply stated that there was a problem with 'grailsApplication' and there was a class not foundthe app ran on my workstation using run-app,the app doesn't run on my workstation using run-war (regardless of whether the correct jars are supplied),lack of sleep!
On to the next issue!