Unseen exception before

Question

Hi All,
I am building an RMI application based on a server and a client which is an applet (with a callback).
The whole thing is working fine whe I use Applet viewer.
But when I use it in IE5.5 with the JAVA 1.3 plugin I get this Exception:
RemoteException:
java.rmi.ServerException: RemoteException occurred in server thread; nested exception is:
     java.rmi.UnmarshalException: error unmarshalling arguments; nested exception is:
     java.net.MalformedURLException: no protocol: de
java.rmi.ServerException: RemoteException occurred in server thread; nested exception is:
     java.rmi.UnmarshalException: error unmarshalling arguments; nested exception is:
     java.net.MalformedURLException: no protocol: de
java.rmi.UnmarshalException: error unmarshalling arguments; nested exception is:
     java.net.MalformedURLException: no protocol: de
java.net.MalformedURLException: no protocol: de
     at sun.rmi.transport.StreamRemoteCall.exceptionReceivedFromServer(Unknown Source)
     at sun.rmi.transport.StreamRemoteCall.executeCall(Unknown Source)
     at sun.rmi.server.UnicastRef.invoke(Unknown Source)
     at RMIServer_Stub.registerTimeMonitor(Unknown Source)
     at Applet1.init(Applet1.java:56)
     at sun.applet.AppletPanel.run(Unknown Source)
     at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)This happens when I try to call on of the remote method after binding to the server.
Any Ideas ???
Raph

Answer 1

How do you make the client stub class available to the Server? Is it present in Server JVM's classpath or are you relying upon the dynamic class loading of the stub class from the client to the server?
If you're using dynamic class loading (and from your description it seems so) then make sure that the java.rmi.server.codebase property has been set appropriately in the client side so that the server can get the Stub class definition of the client when you register the client as a remote object to the server. From the stack trace it looks like the server can't unmarshall the remote reference passed by the client because of a malformed URL while trying to get the client Stub class.
Try this first. Keep the client stub (generated by rmic) in the server's classpath and code just the way you're doing now. I think the problem will then disappear.
Of course that may not be a desirable solution (especially if your client is an applet). In that case you'll have to figure out ways of making the client stub available to the server JVM. You may end up writing your own custom RMIClassLoader or explicitly use RMIClassLoader.loadClass() method.