OpenPortal WSRP: ContainerException

I built few JSR 286 Portlets using OpenPortal container with OpenPortal WSRP Implementation. The portlets were working fine in our DEV enviroment but when moved to QA, whenever the portlet is requested it throws below exception in the logs leaving no clue of what’s happening behind the scenes.

catalina.log

Dec 10, 2010 1:36:56 PM com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.invoker.WindowInvoker getPortletContent
WARNING: PSPL_PCCTXCSPPCI0006
com.sun.portal.container.ContainerException: PortletContainer.getMarkup(): javax.servlet.ServletException: Servlet.init() for servlet PortletAppEngineServlet threw exception
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.impl.PortletContainer.getMarkup(PortletContainer.java:280)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.invoker.WindowInvoker.getPortletContent(WindowInvoker.java:378)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.invoker.WindowInvoker.render(WindowInvoker.java:252)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.driver.PortletContent.getContent(PortletContent.java:71)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.driver.DesktopServlet.getPortletContents(DesktopServlet.java:320)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.driver.DesktopServlet.getAllPortletContents(DesktopServlet.java:263)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.driver.DesktopServlet.doGetPost(DesktopServlet.java:123)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.driver.DesktopServlet.doGet(DesktopServlet.java:92)
	at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:690)
	at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:269)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:188)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:213)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:174)
	at org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:433)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:127)
	at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:117)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:108)
	at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:174)
	at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.process(Http11Processor.java:874)
	at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11BaseProtocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.processConnection(Http11BaseProtocol.java:665)
	at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.PoolTcpEndpoint.processSocket(PoolTcpEndpoint.java:528)
	at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.LeaderFollowerWorkerThread.runIt(LeaderFollowerWorkerThread.java:81)
	at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.ThreadPool$ControlRunnable.run(ThreadPool.java:689)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:595)
javax.servlet.ServletException: Servlet.init() for servlet PortletAppEngineServlet threw exception
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.loadServlet(StandardWrapper.java:1180)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.allocate(StandardWrapper.java:791)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationDispatcher.invoke(ApplicationDispatcher.java:648)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationDispatcher.doInclude(ApplicationDispatcher.java:584)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationDispatcher.include(ApplicationDispatcher.java:497)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.impl.PortletContainer.invokePAE(PortletContainer.java:883)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.impl.PortletContainer.invokePAE(PortletContainer.java:734)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.impl.PortletContainer.getMarkup(PortletContainer.java:221)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.invoker.WindowInvoker.getPortletContent(WindowInvoker.java:378)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.invoker.WindowInvoker.render(WindowInvoker.java:252)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.driver.PortletContent.getContent(PortletContent.java:71)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.driver.DesktopServlet.getPortletContents(DesktopServlet.java:320)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.driver.DesktopServlet.getAllPortletContents(DesktopServlet.java:263)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.driver.DesktopServlet.doGetPost(DesktopServlet.java:123)
	at com.sun.portal.portletcontainer.driver.DesktopServlet.doGet(DesktopServlet.java:92)
	at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:690)
	at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:269)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:188)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:213)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:174)
	at org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:433)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:127)
	at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:117)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:108)
	at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:174)
	at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.process(Http11Processor.java:874)
	at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11BaseProtocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.processConnection(Http11BaseProtocol.java:665)
	at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.PoolTcpEndpoint.processSocket(PoolTcpEndpoint.java:528)
	at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.LeaderFollowerWorkerThread.runIt(LeaderFollowerWorkerThread.java:81)
	at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.ThreadPool$ControlRunnable.run(ThreadPool.java:689)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:595)

Our App is hosted on Tomcat 5.5.26 in both QA and DEV environments and it turns out that each of the installation varies in configuration settings in server.xml. This seems to be causing the issue. As shown in below snippet, change unpackWARs=”true” to resolves the issue. Another alternative to making server.xml changes is to deploy the WAR file in exploded format

${TOMCAT_HOME}/conf/server.xml

  <Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps"
       unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"
       xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false">
  </Host>