NPE when looking up forums or categories

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

We have JForum installed on a WebSphere, and since a number of days the forum has started to behave badly:
* slow response at first
* after some time, no response at all

Looking at the output of the server console, we see the following errors appear:

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at net.jforum.entities.Category.getForum(Category.java:291)
at net.jforum.repository.ForumRepository.getForum(ForumRepository.java:419)
at net.jforum.view.forum.RSSAction.forumTopics(RSSAction.java:106)
... 38 more

Could this indicate that our database is corrupt ? Is there a way to know more about when the NPE was generated ? debug logging ?
[originally posted on jforum.net by alidan]

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

Things are getting worse: no there is the following exception when trying to open a first session:

[7/16/07 12:22:30:581 CEST] 00000028 SystemOut O 12:22:30,580 ERROR [ExceptionWriter ] net.jforum.exceptions.DatabaseException: java.sql.SQLException: Column not found: user_notify_always
at org.hsqldb.jdbc.Util.sqlException(Unknown Source)
at org.hsqldb.jdbc.Util.sqlException(Unknown Source)
at org.hsqldb.jdbc.jdbcResultSet.findColumn(Unknown Source)
at org.hsqldb.jdbc.jdbcResultSet.getInt(Unknown Source)
at net.jforum.dao.generic.GenericUserDAO.fillUserFromResultSet(GenericUserDAO.java:200)
at net.jforum.dao.generic.GenericUserDAO.selectById(GenericUserDAO.java:105)
at net.jforum.repository.SecurityRepository.load(SecurityRepository.java:94)
at net.jforum.repository.SecurityRepository.load(SecurityRepository.java:112)
at net.jforum.JForum.service(JForum.java:166)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:856)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.service(ServletWrapper.java:989)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.service(ServletWrapper.java:930)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:145)
at net.jforum.util.legacy.clickstream.ClickstreamFilter.doFilter(ClickstreamFilter.java:59)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.FilterInstanceWrapper.doFilter(FilterInstanceWrapper.java:190)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:130)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain._doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:87)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.doFilter(WebAppFilterManager.java:761)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.doFilter(WebAppFilterManager.java:673)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.handleRequest(ServletWrapper.java:498)
at com.ibm.ws.wswebcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.handleRequest(ServletWrapper.java:464)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebApp.handleRequest(WebApp.java:3163)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebGroup.handleRequest(WebGroup.java:254)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.WebContainer.handleRequest(WebContainer.java:811)
at com.ibm.ws.wswebcontainer.WebContainer.handleRequest(WebContainer.java:1433)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.channel.WCChannelLink.ready(WCChannelLink.java:100)
at com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.handleDiscrimination(HttpInboundLink.java:465)
at com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.handleNewInformation(HttpInboundLink.java:394)
at com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.ready(HttpInboundLink.java:274)
at com.ibm.ws.tcp.channel.impl.NewConnectionInitialReadCallback.sendToDiscriminators(NewConnectionInitialReadCallback.java:214)
at com.ibm.ws.tcp.channel.impl.NewConnectionInitialReadCallback.complete(NewConnectionInitialReadCallback.java:113)
at com.ibm.ws.tcp.channel.impl.AioReadCompletionListener.futureCompleted(AioReadCompletionListener.java:152)
at com.ibm.io.async.AbstractAsyncFuture.invokeCallback(AbstractAsyncFuture.java:213)
at com.ibm.io.async.AbstractAsyncFuture.fireCompletionActions(AbstractAsyncFuture.java:195)
at com.ibm.io.async.AsyncFuture.completed(AsyncFuture.java:136)
at com.ibm.io.async.ResultHandler.complete(ResultHandler.java:195)
at com.ibm.io.async.ResultHandler.runEventProcessingLoop(ResultHandler.java:743)
at com.ibm.io.async.ResultHandler$2.run(ResultHandler.java:873)
at com.ibm.ws.util.ThreadPool$Worker.run(ThreadPool.java:1469)
Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: Column not found: user_notify_always
... 39 more

So it's clearly a problem of a corrupted database. The hsqldb
What is the way out of this (except returning to a former backup and loosing more recent data) ?
[originally posted on jforum.net by alidan]

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

Did you upgrade from an older version of JForum? this looks like a forgotten sql update script.

Rafael
[originally posted on jforum.net by Rafael Steil]