TIBCO Spotfire Server with custom authenticator fails to start after upgrade to 12.0 with NoClassDefFoundError error

Product:TIBCO Spotfire Analyst
Versions:12.0 and higher

Summary:
This article explains why a TIBCO Spotfire Server with custom authenticator fails to start after upgrade to 12.0 with NoClassDefFoundError error and how to resolve it.

Details:
After an upgrade to 12.0 or higher, if the TIBCO Spotfire Server is configured with a custom authenticator then it may fail to start with the following error recorded in server.log:
 

ERROR 2022-11-30T20:00:25,261-0600 [*Initialization*] web.context.ContextLoader: Context initialization failed
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'authorizationEndpointManager' defined in class path resource [applicationContext-tss.xml]: Cannot resolve reference to bean 'authenticationManager' while setting constructor argument; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'postAuthenticationFilterFactory' defined in class path resource [applicationContext-tss.xml]: Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/spotfire/server/security/AbstractPostAuthenticationFilter

The error is caused by a missing class in Custom Post Authentication Filter code. AbstractPostAuthenticationFilter class that has been deprecated since 10.3, and was removed in version 12.0. See TIBCO Spotfire Server Release Notes for 12.0 LTS (TSS-31245).

Note: If the Spotfire Server is accessed via a load balancer, proxy, or gateway, when trying to access the Spotfire Server web user interface when the server has failed to start, the general "502 Error: Web server received an invalid response while acting as a gateway or Proxy server"  error may be seen which just indicates the application was not online.

Resolution:

To resolve, the Custom Post Authentication Filter implementation that extends the AbstractPostAuthenticationFilter needs to be updated. Instead of extending AbstractPostAuthenticationFilter, use the PostAuthenticationFilter class.

See External Authentication in TIBCO Spotfire® 10.3 and Later Versions and below references for more details and examples.