When running in an environment in which code is invoked from maven -> junit -> mockit into test code, under 17015b33_x86_64 - odd NPEs are received in java.io.FileInputStream in attempting to close a file descriptor following a classloading attempt using a URLClassLoader. It appears that instance fields are not getting set on object creation properly. When trying later versions of the JDK, including this latest version of 7u40, instead of the NPEs we get core dumps - for every attempted execution.
I've saved the core dump file if you need it.
# To suppress the following error report, specify this argument
# after -XX: or in .hotspotrc: SuppressErrorAt=/classFileParser.cpp:3878
#
# A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment:
#
# Internal Error (/HUDSON/workspace/jdk7u40-2-build-linux-amd64-product/jdk7u40/hotspot/src/share/vm/classfile/classFileParser.cpp:3878), pid=26007, tid=140004061697792
# assert(f == k->has_finalizer()) failed: inconsistent has_finalizer
#
# JRE version: Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (7.0_40-b29) (build 1.7.0_40-ea-fastdebug-b29)
# Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (24.0-b48-fastdebug mixed mode linux-amd64 compressed oops)
# Core dump written. Default location: /weblogic/dev/src_maven/modules/application-archive/core or core.26007 (max size 1048576 kB). To ensure a full core dump, try "ulimit -c unlimited" before starting Java again
#
# An error report file with more information is saved as:
# /weblogic/dev/src_maven/modules/application-archive/hs_err_pid26007.log
Phoning home...
Using server: 10.161.186.18, port 4711
#
# If you would like to submit a bug report, please visit:
# http://bugreport.sun.com/bugreport/crash.jsp
#
Current thread is 140004061697792
Dumping core ...
Aborted (core dumped)