Kaffe-1.0.7 crashes on Linux

Hi Everyone,
I am trying to run Kaffe-1.0.7 for research purposes (to use with
JSlice). I downloaded the source and compiled it successfully, but I
always get the error below when running. The same thing happens with
the binaries. It seems to be a class-loader issue. I have spent hours
trying to figure out what's wrong but still no clue. Any of you have
seen this before or knows how to get more information about it ?


 /usr/local/kaffe/bin/java -v -verbosecall -debug Test
...
soft_trace: java/lang/Class.forName(Ljava/lang/String;)Ljava/lang/Class;
soft_trace: java/lang/Class.getStackClass(I)Ljava/lang/Class;
soft_trace: java/lang/String.equals(Ljava/lang/Object;)Z
soft_trace: java/lang/Class.getClassLoader()Ljava/lang/ClassLoader;
Internal error: caught an unexpected exception.
Please check your CLASSPATH and your installation.
java/lang/NullPointerException
Aborted

My system configuration:
Kaffe-1.0.7 compiled with gcc-3.4 .
linux-i686,  kernel v. 2.6.27-11-generic

thanks,
Nagy Mostafa - UCSB