Brad, looks like this is related to the serialization issues your are currently looking at.

Assigning back to Nils for a retest now that the beans have been made serializable.

There's been no change to this bug.

I did some more testing on this case. I loaded the richTab demo on Tomcat then restarted the server looking for any serialization errors. Nothing as described showed up on the logs.

Did the same thing with glassfish 3.0.1 and got the following error when restarting the sever:

[#|2011-01-13T10:35:44.524-0500|SEVERE|glassfish3.0.1|org.apache.catalina.session.ManagerBase|_ThreadID=11;_ThreadName=Thread-1;|PWC2773: Exception loading sessions from persistent storage
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.sun.el.lang.VariableMapperImpl
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:202)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:307)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:248)
at org.apache.felix.framework.ModuleImpl.searchDynamicImports(ModuleImpl.java:1484)
at org.apache.felix.framework.ModuleImpl.findClassOrResourceByDelegation(ModuleImpl.java:695)
at org.apache.felix.framework.ModuleImpl.access$100(ModuleImpl.java:61)
at org.apache.felix.framework.ModuleImpl$ModuleClassLoader.loadClass(ModuleImpl.java:1656)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:248)
at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:247)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.resolveClass(ObjectInputStream.java:604)
at com.sun.enterprise.naming.util.ObjectInputStreamWithLoader.resolveClass(ObjectInputStreamWithLoader.java:117)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readNonProxyDesc(ObjectInputStream.java:1575)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readClassDesc(ObjectInputStream.java:1496)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1732)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1329)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(ObjectInputStream.java:351)
at com.sun.el.MethodExpressionImpl.readExternal(MethodExpressionImpl.java:315)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readExternalData(ObjectInputStream.java:1792)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1751)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1329)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(ObjectInputStream.java:351)
at com.sun.faces.facelets.el.TagMethodExpression.readExternal(TagMethodExpression.java:151)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readExternalData(ObjectInputStream.java:1792)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1751)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1329)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readArray(ObjectInputStream.java:1667)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1323)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readArray(ObjectInputStream.java:1667)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1323)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readArray(ObjectInputStream.java:1667)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1323)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readArray(ObjectInputStream.java:1667)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1323)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(ObjectInputStream.java:351)
at java.util.HashMap.readObject(HashMap.java:1030)
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor45.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.invokeReadObject(ObjectStreamClass.java:974)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1849)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1753)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1329)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readArray(ObjectInputStream.java:1667)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1323)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(ObjectInputStream.java:351)
at java.util.HashMap.readObject(HashMap.java:1030)
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor45.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.invokeReadObject(ObjectStreamClass.java:974)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1849)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1753)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1329)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(ObjectInputStream.java:351)
at java.util.HashMap.readObject(HashMap.java:1030)
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor45.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.invokeReadObject(ObjectStreamClass.java:974)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1849)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1753)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1329)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(ObjectInputStream.java:351)
at org.apache.catalina.session.StandardSession.readRemainingObject(StandardSession.java:1818)
at org.apache.catalina.session.StandardSession.readObject(StandardSession.java:1750)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.invokeReadObject(ObjectStreamClass.java:974)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1849)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1753)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1329)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(ObjectInputStream.java:351)
at org.apache.catalina.session.StandardSession.deserialize(StandardSession.java:1063)
at org.apache.catalina.session.StandardManager.readSessions(StandardManager.java:511)
at org.apache.catalina.session.StandardManager.doLoadFromFile(StandardManager.java:441)
at org.apache.catalina.session.StandardManager.load(StandardManager.java:411)
at org.apache.catalina.session.StandardManager.start(StandardManager.java:854)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:5270)
at com.sun.enterprise.web.WebModule.start(WebModule.java:499)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:928)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:912)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:694)
at com.sun.enterprise.web.WebContainer.loadWebModule(WebContainer.java:1947)
at com.sun.enterprise.web.WebContainer.loadWebModule(WebContainer.java:1619)
at com.sun.enterprise.web.WebApplication.start(WebApplication.java:90)
at org.glassfish.internal.data.EngineRef.start(EngineRef.java:126)
at org.glassfish.internal.data.ModuleInfo.start(ModuleInfo.java:241)
at org.glassfish.internal.data.ApplicationInfo.start(ApplicationInfo.java:236)
at com.sun.enterprise.v3.server.ApplicationLifecycle.deploy(ApplicationLifecycle.java:339)
at com.sun.enterprise.v3.server.ApplicationLoaderService.processApplication(ApplicationLoaderService.java:362)
at com.sun.enterprise.v3.server.ApplicationLoaderService.postConstruct(ApplicationLoaderService.java:185)
at com.sun.hk2.component.AbstractWombImpl.inject(AbstractWombImpl.java:174)
at com.sun.hk2.component.ConstructorWomb$1.run(ConstructorWomb.java:87)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at com.sun.hk2.component.ConstructorWomb.initialize(ConstructorWomb.java:84)
at com.sun.hk2.component.AbstractWombImpl.get(AbstractWombImpl.java:77)
at com.sun.hk2.component.SingletonInhabitant.get(SingletonInhabitant.java:58)
at com.sun.hk2.component.LazyInhabitant.get(LazyInhabitant.java:107)
at com.sun.hk2.component.AbstractInhabitantImpl.get(AbstractInhabitantImpl.java:60)
at com.sun.enterprise.v3.server.AppServerStartup.run(AppServerStartup.java:236)
at com.sun.enterprise.v3.server.AppServerStartup.start(AppServerStartup.java:128)
at com.sun.enterprise.module.bootstrap.Main.launch(Main.java:457)
at com.sun.enterprise.module.bootstrap.Main.launch(Main.java:401)
at org.jvnet.hk2.osgiadapter.HK2Main.start(HK2Main.java:125)
at org.apache.felix.framework.util.SecureAction.startActivator(SecureAction.java:640)
at org.apache.felix.framework.Felix.activateBundle(Felix.java:1700)
at org.apache.felix.framework.Felix.startBundle(Felix.java:1622)
at org.apache.felix.framework.BundleImpl.start(BundleImpl.java:915)
at org.jvnet.hk2.osgimain.Main.start(Main.java:140)
at org.apache.felix.framework.util.SecureAction.startActivator(SecureAction.java:640)
at org.apache.felix.framework.Felix.activateBundle(Felix.java:1700)
at org.apache.felix.framework.Felix.startBundle(Felix.java:1622)
at org.apache.felix.framework.Felix.setActiveStartLevel(Felix.java:1077)
at org.apache.felix.framework.StartLevelImpl.run(StartLevelImpl.java:264)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)

I wasn't able to reproduce this error on tomcat 6/7 and glassfish 3.01. I'm going to ignore the class not found exception and create a new bug becomes a problem in the future.