temurin-build: NPE at sun.awt.FontConfiguration.getVersion(FontConfiguration.java:1264) when using install4j caused by font config missing

Installing packages fontconfig and urw-fonts on CentOS 6 & 7 fixed the issue.

The NullPointerException in FontConfiguration.java:1264 is caused by a missing font configuration file, which is not included with the Linux version of AdoptOpenJDK. It is important to notice that the direct cause of the exception is a missing configuration file and not that actual font files are missing.

When the AWT font subsystem is initialized, it will look for a font configuration file in $JAVA_HOME/lib following a naming scheme and priority as described here: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/intl/fontconfig.html

Even if no fonts are provided by the JDK and use of OS provided fonts is not intented or configured, a minimal configuration is required by the AWT font subsystem to initialize without throwing exceptions. Providing a fontconfig.properties file in $JAVA_HOME/lib with the following two lines will at least, to start with, mitigate the problem with the NullPointerException:

version=1
sequence.allfonts=default

Since we are only using fonts bundled with our application, this is a feasible workaround in our situation. It allows the font subsystem to initialize and we can later without issues load our own fonts from the classpath. I am not sure what happens and YMMV if you try to run an application, which relies on the JDK to provide actual fonts, either as bundled with the JDK or as provided by the operating system.

Using adoptopenjdk/openjdk11-openj9:jdk-11.0.7_10_openj9-0.20.0-alpine-slim I just had to run : apk add --no-cache fontconfig ttf-dejavu

This also fixes the issue if your Docker container is build on top of openjdk:8-jre-alpine

Using adoptopenjdk/openjdk11-openj9:jdk-11.0.7_10_openj9-0.20.0-alpine-slim I just had to run : apk add --no-cache fontconfig ttf-dejavu

@jarnbjo Thanks for your solution. I was able to mitigate the problem with the NullPointerException in FontConfiguration.java:1264 on alphine Linux

Currently facing

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException: null
hub_1           | 	at sun.awt.FcFontManager.getDefaultPlatformFont(FcFontManager.java:76)
hub_1           | 	at sun.font.SunFontManager$2.run(SunFontManager.java:433)
hub_1           | 	at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
hub_1           | 	at sun.font.SunFontManager.<init>(SunFontManager.java:376)
hub_1           | 	at sun.awt.FcFontManager.<init>(FcFontManager.java:35)
hub_1           | 	at sun.awt.X11FontManager.<init>(X11FontManager.java:57)
hub_1           | 	at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
hub_1           | 	at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:62)
hub_1           | 	at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:45)
hub_1           | 	at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:423)
hub_1           | 	at java.lang.Class.newInstance(Class.java:442)
hub_1           | 	at sun.font.FontManagerFactory$1.run(FontManagerFactory.java:83)
hub_1           | 	at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
hub_1           | 	at sun.font.FontManagerFactory.getInstance(FontManagerFactory.java:74)
hub_1           | 	at sun.java2d.SunGraphicsEnvironment.getFontManagerForSGE(SunGraphicsEnvironment.java:190)
hub_1           | 	at sun.java2d.SunGraphicsEnvironment.getAvailableFontFamilyNames(SunGraphicsEnvironment.java:224)
hub_1           | 	at sun.java2d.SunGraphicsEnvironment.getAvailableFontFamilyNames(SunGraphicsEnvironment.java:252)
hub_1           | 	at sun.java2d.HeadlessGraphicsEnvironment.getAvailableFontFamilyNames(HeadlessGraphicsEnvironment.java:94)
hub_1           | 	at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.util.JRGraphEnvInitializer.initializeGraphEnv(JRGraphEnvInitializer.java:57)

Any help is appreciated!! Distribution : jdk8u202-b08 Linux x64

+1 for the fontconfig workaround, and didn’t need to use fontconfig.properties. (jdk8u202-b08)

Installing fontconfig on Ubuntu 16.04 server fixed the problem for me. No need to add fontconfig.properties fortunately (makes OpenJDK upgrades easier):

$ sudo apt-get install fontconfig
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  fontconfig-config fonts-dejavu-core libfontconfig1
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  fontconfig fontconfig-config fonts-dejavu-core libfontconfig1
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/1398 kB of archives.
After this operation, 4490 kB of additional disk space will be used.

Looks like fonts-dejavu-core is important as well. Without it another exception occurs.

Using JRE 11 (yes, the JRE download, not JDK):

$ java -version
openjdk version "11.0.7" 2020-04-14
OpenJDK Runtime Environment AdoptOpenJDK (build 11.0.7+10)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM AdoptOpenJDK (build 11.0.7+10, mixed mode)

Same problem with fontconfig 2:2.13.1 (on arch linux). I tried loading fontconfig library manually and I saw following error:

Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1.12.0: /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1.12.0: undefined symbol: FT_Done_MM_Var
	at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method)
	...

It means the included jre/lib/amd64/libfreetype.so.6 is not compatible with system fontconfig. I removed jre/lib/amd64/libfreetype.so.6 and problem solved.