Eclipse Error On Startup - eclipse

Question

Eclipse was running fine last night, but this morning I tried starting it up and I came upon this error:
alt text http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/4416/ss20100407181208.png
Here's the log
!SESSION 2010-04-07 17:58:37.208 -----------------------------------------------
eclipse.buildId=I20080617-2000
java.version=1.6.0_13
java.vendor=Sun Microsystems Inc.
BootLoader constants: OS=win32, ARCH=x86, WS=win32, NL=en_US
Command-line arguments: -os win32 -ws win32 -arch x86
!ENTRY org.eclipse.osgi 4 0 2010-04-07 17:58:37.457
!MESSAGE Startup error
!STACK 1
java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: ""
at java.lang.NumberFormatException.forInputString(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Integer.parseInt(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Integer.parseInt(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.osgi.storagemanager.StorageManager.updateTable(StorageManager.java:512)
at org.eclipse.osgi.storagemanager.StorageManager.open(StorageManager.java:694)
at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.baseadaptor.BaseStorage.initFileManager(BaseStorage.java:208)
at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.baseadaptor.BaseStorage.initialize(BaseStorage.java:142)
at org.eclipse.osgi.baseadaptor.BaseAdaptor.initializeStorage(BaseAdaptor.java:124)
at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.Framework.initialize(Framework.java:180)
at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.Framework.<init>(Framework.java:152)
at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.OSGi.createFramework(OSGi.java:90)
at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.OSGi.<init>(OSGi.java:31)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.startup(EclipseStarter.java:286)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.run(EclipseStarter.java:175)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.invokeFramework(Main.java:549)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.basicRun(Main.java:504)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.run(Main.java:1236)
Any help? I really need this up and running, and reinstalling and resetting all of my plugins and settings just isn't an option at the moment.

Answer 1

I had the same issue. After some debugging i tried deleting the following folders from my eclipse directory
./configuration/org.eclipse.core.runtime/.manager
./configuration/org.eclipse.osgi/.manager
That fixed the issue for me. No side effects. I think this is just a cache because it recreates itself on the fly. The source code doesn't seem to treat it with any special importance if it is not found, but there is a bug that tries to parse an empty string on line 512.
Looking into the source of org.eclipse.osgi it looks like these files are somehow managed with a timestamp, so if you're doing anything that will mess with the timestamps then you'll run into this issue. I use git to manage my eclipse installation so i can revert to an earlier version if a newly installed feature starts stepping on my karma. Ran into this issue after reverting. Added it to .gitignore.

Answer 2

Try at least to restart eclipse with a -clean option.
Check also (just in case) your disk space! That can occur when not enough space is left on the disk, since the code shows it is reading strings (supposed to be Integer) from a file.
Try also upgrading your java used to start eclipse to the latest one (u19 instead of u13)
This error stacktrace has been reported in bug 113596 about some version of Vista: what OS are you using, and has it been updated recently? (by Windows update for instance)

Answer 3

A Best shot would be to use a fresh copy of eclipse and point the workspace location that you were using in the old eclipse. By this way, you will not lose your settings and will 100% avoid the startup error.