Applet runs with jre 1.5 but not jre 1.6

Question

I'm working on an applet which works just fine when 1.5.0_15 is the latest JRE installed on the PC, but does not work when 1.6.0_6 is installed. In the latter case, the applet does not load due to getting a NoClassDefFoundError. Here's the Java Console error trace:
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/hp/nonstop/hsc/core/configuration/ConfigurationMetaData
        at com.hp.nonstop.hsc.tools.configurator.ConfiguratorApplet.init(ConfiguratorApplet.java:53)
        at sun.applet.AppletPanel.run(Unknown Source)
        at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.hp.nonstop.hsc.core.configurati
on.ConfigurationMetaData
        at sun.applet.AppletClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
        at sun.applet.AppletClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(Unknown Source)
        ... 3 moreThe relevant (I think) portions of the <object> generated by the JSP is:
<object
    classid="clsid:8AD9C840-044E-11D1-B3E9-00805F499D93"
    name="ConfiguratorApplet" width="600" height="400"
    codebase="http://java.sun.com/products/plugin/1.3/jinstall-131-win32.cab">
<param name="java_code" value="com.hp.nonstop.hsc.tools.configurator.ConfiguratorApplet.class">
<param name="java_codebase" value="/HSC/configurator">
<param name="java_archive" value="configurator.jar,../lib/configapi.jar,<<other jar files listed here>>">
<<other param tags included here>>
</object>The class it can't seem to find (under 1.6) is actually located in the configapi.jar file, which itself is located in the ../lib folder (relative to the /HSC/configurator folder where configurator.jar is located).
Obviously, when the browser is using JRE 1.5.15 the VM engine can find all the needed classes as the applet runs OK. But when 1.6.6 is installed, things can't be found. I suspect something different in the search paths (though I thought the "java_archive" value was supposed to specify that), in the permissions needed to read the files, or something, but I just can't track down what the difference is (and thus why things are failing with 1.6 installed).
Any help/ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Stephen.Thomas wrote:
have [you] tried moving the configapi.jar into the same folder as the configurator.jarYes, I have. I've also tried re-rooting the page to the lib directory where everything exists; i.e. changing java_codebase to /HSC/lib and changing java_archive so all jars referenced no longer have ../lib/ in them. Same behavior.
It's almost as if the search path is behaving differently between 1.5 and 1.6, possibly not even being controlled by the values of java_codebase and java_archive at all.