tomcat 8 stopped working after ubuntu update

Question

I have recently updates my ubuntu deskto to 18.04. After this my tomcat is failing at startup. Each time I restart tomcat using the command service tomcat8 restart the log file give the following error -

    Caused by: java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/xml/bind/JAXBContext
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.report(FutureTask.java:122)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.get(FutureTask.java:191)
    at org.glassfish.hk2.utilities.cache.LRUHybridCache$OriginThreadAwareFuture.get(LRUHybridCache.java:164)
    at org.glassfish.hk2.utilities.cache.LRUHybridCache.compute(LRUHybridCache.java:303)
    ... 135 more
Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/xml/bind/JAXBContext
    at java.base/java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethods0(Native Method)
    at java.base/java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredMethods(Class.java:3119)
    at java.base/java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethods(Class.java:2268)
    at org.glassfish.hk2.utilities.reflection.internal.ClassReflectionHelperUtilities$3.run(ClassReflectionHelperUtilities.java:108)
    at org.glassfish.hk2.utilities.reflection.internal.ClassReflectionHelperUtilities$3.run(ClassReflectionHelperUtilities.java:104)
    at java.base/java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at org.glassfish.hk2.utilities.reflection.internal.ClassReflectionHelperUtilities.secureGetDeclaredMethods(ClassReflectionHelperUtilities.java:104)
    at org.glassfish.hk2.utilities.reflection.internal.ClassReflectionHelperUtilities.getDeclaredMethodWrappers(ClassReflectionHelperUtilities.java:133)
    at org.glassfish.hk2.utilities.reflection.internal.ClassReflectionHelperUtilities.getAllMethodWrappers(ClassReflectionHelperUtilities.java:192)
    at org.glassfish.hk2.utilities.reflection.internal.ClassReflectionHelperUtilities.getAllMethodWrappers(ClassReflectionHelperUtilities.java:193)
    at org.glassfish.hk2.utilities.reflection.internal.ClassReflectionHelperImpl$3.compute(ClassReflectionHelperImpl.java:84)
    at org.glassfish.hk2.utilities.reflection.internal.ClassReflectionHelperImpl$3.compute(ClassReflectionHelperImpl.java:80)
    at org.glassfish.hk2.utilities.cache.LRUHybridCache$OriginThreadAwareFuture$1.call(LRUHybridCache.java:115)
    at org.glassfish.hk2.utilities.cache.LRUHybridCache$OriginThreadAwareFuture$1.call(LRUHybridCache.java:111)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:264)

I then installed jdk8 and run update-alternatives command like this -

dimension:bin$ sudo update-alternatives --config javac
There are 2 choices for the alternative javac (providing /usr/bin/javac).

  Selection    Path                                          Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
  0            /usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64/bin/javac   1101      auto mode
  1            /usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64/bin/javac   1101      manual mode
* 2            /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/bin/javac    1081      manual mode

Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: 
dimension:bin$ sudo update-alternatives --config java
There are 2 choices for the alternative java (providing /usr/bin/java).

  Selection    Path                                            Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
  0            /usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64/bin/java      1101      auto mode
  1            /usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64/bin/java      1101      manual mode
* 2            /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java   1081      manual mode

Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:

When I again restarted the tomcat, I saw the same error. Here are the contents to my jvm folder -

ls -lh /usr/lib/jvm/
total 8.0K
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   25 Apr  8 18:46 default-java -> java-1.11.0-openjdk-amd64
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   21 Aug 24 23:06 java-1.11.0-openjdk-amd64 -> java-11-openjdk-amd64
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4.0K Oct  4 10:56 java-11-openjdk-amd64
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   20 Oct 28  2016 java-1.8.0-openjdk-amd64 -> java-8-openjdk-amd64
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4.0K Oct  4 16:03 java-8-openjdk-amd64

My JAVA_HOME env is currently set to empty.

What should I do to fix my issue.

Answer 1

The java.base part of exception stack trace at java.base/java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:264) suggests that you are still running with JDK 11.

Ensure that Tomcat 8 is running with JDK 8. Try debugging the Tomcat startup script with set -x to see how is the Java location determined, maybe it's set in /etc/default/tomcat8 ?