The system has attempted to use an undefined value, which usually indicates a programming error

[Carolyn5E88]

I'm suddenly receiving the error message "The system has attempted to use an undefined value, which usually indicates a programming error, either in your code or some system code. Null Pointers are another name for undefined values."

This is a development site on my local machine. Everything was working until I changed the database associated with the datasource. When I refreshed the page, I got the message above. Now none of the pages work.

It's an old application using Fusebox 5.5 and I'm migrating it from ColdFusion 11 to ColdFusion 2018.

I'm not skilled at reading stack trace, but here it is in case someone sees something useful. Thank you!

Resources:

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Browser Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:86.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/86.0
Remote Address 127.0.0.1
Referrer
Date/Time 23-Mar-21 03:35 PM
Stack Trace

java.lang.NullPointerException
at coldfusion.runtime.AppHelper.generateNewClientIDs(AppHelper.java:605)
at coldfusion.runtime.AppHelper.handleClientIDs(AppHelper.java:221)
at coldfusion.runtime.AppHelper.ValidateClientAndSession(AppHelper.java:1239)
at coldfusion.filter.ApplicationFilter.invoke(ApplicationFilter.java:483)
at coldfusion.filter.RequestMonitorFilter.invoke(RequestMonitorFilter.java:43)
at coldfusion.filter.MonitoringFilter.invoke(MonitoringFilter.java:40)
at coldfusion.filter.PathFilter.invoke(PathFilter.java:162)
at coldfusion.filter.IpFilter.invoke(IpFilter.java:45)
at coldfusion.filter.LicenseFilter.invoke(LicenseFilter.java:30)
at coldfusion.filter.ExceptionFilter.invoke(ExceptionFilter.java:96)
at coldfusion.filter.BrowserDebugFilter.invoke(BrowserDebugFilter.java:78)
at coldfusion.filter.ClientScopePersistenceFilter.invoke(ClientScopePersistenceFilter.java:28)
at coldfusion.filter.BrowserFilter.invoke(BrowserFilter.java:38)
at coldfusion.filter.NoCacheFilter.invoke(NoCacheFilter.java:60)
at coldfusion.filter.GlobalsFilter.invoke(GlobalsFilter.java:38)
at coldfusion.filter.DatasourceFilter.invoke(DatasourceFilter.java:22)
at coldfusion.filter.CachingFilter.invoke(CachingFilter.java:62)
at coldfusion.CfmServlet.service(CfmServlet.java:226)
at coldfusion.bootstrap.BootstrapServlet.service(BootstrapServlet.java:311)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:231)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:166)
at coldfusion.monitor.event.MonitoringServletFilter.doFilter(MonitoringServletFilter.java:46)
at coldfusion.bootstrap.BootstrapFilter.doFilter(BootstrapFilter.java:47)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:193)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:166)
at coldfusion.inspect.weinre.MobileDeviceDomInspectionFilter.doFilter(MobileDeviceDomInspectionFilter.java:121)
at coldfusion.bootstrap.BootstrapFilter.doFilter(BootstrapFilter.java:47)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:193)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:166)
at org.apache.tomcat.websocket.server.WsFilter.doFilter(WsFilter.java:53)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:193)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:166)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:202)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:97)
at org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:542)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:143)
at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:92)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:78)
at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:359)
at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.service(Http11Processor.java:374)
at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProcessorLight.process(AbstractProcessorLight.java:65)
at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$ConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:888)
at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.doRun(NioEndpoint.java:1597)
at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.SocketProcessorBase.run(SocketProcessorBase.java:49)
at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1128)
at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:628)
at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61)
at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:834)

[Carolyn5E88]

I should add that I've done some basic troubleshooting like restarting the server, rebooting my machine, changing the application name, etc. Also, this is the exception data below the debugging information:

15:53:40.040 - coldfusion.util.RuntimeWrapper Exception - in : line -1
15:53:40.040 - java.lang.NullPointerException - in : line -1

[Carolyn5E88 · Accepted solution]

Sorry for the false alarm! After much consternation, it seems to have corrected itself. Will keep my fingers crossed that it stays that way!

[BKBK]

A missing cookie or session ID perhaps, that later got restored? Reminds me of an old problem with CFID cookies. In any case, thanks for sharing.

[Abram Adams]

I know your issue just seemingly resolved itself, but ours didn't 😞 .  Similar scenario (migrating old site from CF10 to 2018) and encountered the same error. 

Turns out our applicationTimeout was set to 

this.applicationTimeout = createTimeSpan( 0, 0, 0, 0 )

Not sure why, or why that worked before, but changing that to something above 0 fixes the issue for us.  Just thought I'd share that since not everyone's problems fix themselves 😉

[Dave Watts]

On a slightly unrelated note, I don't think setting the application timeout to zero is a good thing. Better to just not use application variables at all - something that can be disabled server-wide in the CF Administrator.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC

[Abram Adams]

Agreed. This was a 10+ year old app that hasn't been touched in... well probably 10 years.  I'm guessing someone was being clever or working around some limitation.