http status 500: exception on request for [/web] : null - Rational Jazz/CLM 4.0.1

If you happen to deploy CLM 4.0.1 (formerly known as Jazz Team Server/Requirements Composer/Requirements Management etc.) and when you further try to customize it (in my case customization was attempt to deploy BuildForge Connect Adapter for CLM) you may run inot some CLM dashboard pages unresponsive. Particularly, admin.war application stops responding and seems to have some sort of authentication issues. In my case, when I tried to go to Home->Collaborative Lifecycle Project Management page, I received the follwing error in the browser:

Http status 500: exception on request for [/web] : null

and SystemOut.log contained a bunch of exceptions:

00000044 zazl E org.dojotoolkit.zazl.internal.RhinoDTLHandler runDTLScript Exception on request for [/projects/new] java.lang.NullPointerException

00000044 SystemOut     O 15:39:08,820 [WebContainer : 14] ERROR com.ibm.team.lpa.config - An uncaught Exception has been thrown com.ibm.team.jfs.app.http.HttpInternalServerErrorException: Exception on request for [/projects/new]

00000044 zazl E org.dojotoolkit.zazl.internal.RhinoDTLHandler runDTLScript Exception on request for [processTemplate]

 java.lang.NullPointerException

0000004f zazl E org.dojotoolkit.zazl.internal.RhinoDTLHandler runDTLScript Exception on request for [/web]

etc.

I wondered  what to do about it, and finally I saw that all troublesome pages are in /admin context. As my CLM was deployed to WAS 8 server, I simply redeployed (by Update) admin.war application from the console. It worked as a wonder!

to do this go to Websphere applications -> tick admin.war, click Update and find original file in

<CLMInstallDir>/server/webapps, proceed through Nexts, and save configuration afterwards. Then restart application and it should be working.

This trick also works with jts.war application, if you happen to have any trouble with it (with similar errors). Of course, I assume that your previous configuration was in general ok, because war Update does not fix any database content issues and so on. (for db/config problems you should use repotools but that's another story)

Hope this helps, good luck and leave a comment!