Mh, seems the problem is with the X11 display ... - at 15:11:15,518, tries to connect to X11 on :0.0, from org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceView.renderMergedOutputModel(InternalResourceView.java:142) - at 15:11:34,253, gives a NoClassDefFoundError, WITHOUT giving the name of the missing class!, yet again at the same place as above ... org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceView.renderMergedOutputModel(InternalResourceView.java:142) So, I'd say it is not really a "NoClassDefFoundError", but a problem of not being able to access the X11 server ... and thus, not being able to either initialize the java.awt.Font or the JFreeChart class. When static initialisation code of a Java class throws an exception, this may be passed as a NoClassDefFoundError ... I believe. Try to remove the DISPLAY variable from the environment before starting the tomcat server. Then, Java should be able to recognize a headless (i.e., no X11) situation and cope with it. Possibly, you also need to pass -Djava.awt.headless=true, though I never had to do this when running a JBoss/tomcat on a machine with no X11. (see http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2SE/Desktop/headless/ . Hope this was the problem, Sebastian