postgres jdbc class problem

Hi,

I'm writing a simple java applet that queries a postgres database using
JDBC. The applet works fine in the appletviewer and in some copies of
Netscape and MSIE. However, in most copies of Netscape and MSIE it
returns a NullPointerException. The java console error messages aren't
that helpful, so I looked at my web server logs. For the browsers which
are failing I noticed that they are requesting extra class files which
don't seem to be part of the postgres jdbc driver:

[Thu Sep 30 15:28:05 1999] [error] [client 195.89.132.20] File does not
exist: /home/richard/public_html/postgresql/errors_en_US.class
[Thu Sep 30 15:28:05 1999] [error] [client 195.89.132.20] File does not
exist: /home/richard/public_html/postgresql/errors_en.class
[Thu Sep 30 15:28:05 1999] [error] [client 195.89.132.20] File does not
exist: /home/richard/public_html/postgresql/errors_en_US.class
[Thu Sep 30 15:28:05 1999] [error] [client 195.89.132.20] File does not
exist: /home/richard/public_html/postgresql/errors_en.class
[Thu Sep 30 15:28:05 1999] [error] [client 195.89.132.20] File does not
exist: /home/richard/public_html/postgresql/errors.class

Here is the java console message from netscape 4.6:

Netscape Communications Corporation -- Java 1.1.5
Type '?' for options.
Symantec Java! ByteCode Compiler Version 210.065
Copyright (C) 1996-97 Symantec Corporation
# Applet exception: java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
at postgresql.util.PSQLException.translate(Compiled Code)
at postgresql.util.PSQLException.<init>(Compiled Code)
at postgresql.Driver.connect(Compiled Code)
at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(Compiled Code)
* at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(Compiled Code)
at OutputApplet.run(Compiled Code)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Compiled Code)
java.io.IOException: CreateProcess: vcafe -netscape error=0
at java.lang.Win32Process.<init>(Compiled Code)
at java.lang.Runtime.exec(Compiled Code)
* at java.lang.Runtime.exec(Compiled Code)
at netscape.debug.Debugger.launchDebugger(Compiled Code)
at netscape.debug.Debugger.uncaughtException(Compiled Code)
at netscape.applet.AppletThreadGroup.uncaughtException(Compiled Code)

I'm using postgres 6.5.1 with the new 6.5.1-2 JDBC driver that I
downloaded from www.retep.org.uk. My code is faily straightforward:

public void run() {
String url = "jdbc:postgresql://faure.ednet.co.uk/software";
String query = "select * from software";

try {
// Class.forName("postgresql.Driver");
DriverManager.registerDriver((Driver)Class.forName("postgresql.Driver").newInstance());
} catch(Exception ex) {
setError("driver class: " + ex);
return;
}

try {
Vector results = new Vector();
Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection(url,
"username", "password");
Statement stmt = con.createStatement();
ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery(query);
while (rs.next()) {
String s = rs.getString("description");
int level = rs.getInt("ladder_level");
String text = level + " " + s;
results.addElement(text);
}

stmt.close();
con.close();

setResults(results);

} catch(SQLException ex) {
setError("SQLException: " + ex);
}

Does anyone have any ideas about what might be wrong here?

--
Richard Morrell richard(at)ednet(dot)co(dot)uk
Operations Manager - edNET: InternetWorkingSolutions - http://www.ednet.co.uk