NPE on clean, new Liferay 7.3.5 GA6 CE install

2020-11-02T19:06:29Z

New Tomcat bundle on Windows 10. (I have several others from earlier releases) NOt and upgrade, just a clean, new instance. Install goes smoothly. I selected MySQL as the DB. Running Java:

openjdk version "1.8.0_192"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_192-201811210433-b12)
Eclipse OpenJ9 VM (build master-61a34f6be, JRE 1.8.0 Windows 10 amd64-64-Bit Compressed References 20181120_164 (JIT enabled, AOT enabled)
OpenJ9   - 61a34f6be
OMR      - 1b8bfbae
JCL      - 8ef74afc70 based on jdk8u192-b12)

After the initial setup page, I restarted LR. Everything looks normal untill the server has full started and then this statck trace:

02-Nov-2020 01:26:30.237 INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start Server startup in [208310] milliseconds
2020-11-02 01:26:47.173 ERROR [http-nio-8080-exec-1][IncludeTag:128] Current URL / generates exception: java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
   at com.liferay.layout.taglib.internal.display.context.RenderLayoutStructureDisplayContext._getFrontendTokensJSONObject(RenderLayoutStructureDisplayContext.java:871)
   at com.liferay.layout.taglib.internal.display.context.RenderLayoutStructureDisplayContext.getStyleFromStyleBookEntry(RenderLayoutStructureDisplayContext.java:698)
   at com.liferay.layout.taglib.internal.display.context.RenderLayoutStructureDisplayContext.getStyle(RenderLayoutStructureDisplayContext.java:582)
   at org.apache.jsp.render_005flayout_005fstructure.render_005flayout_005fstructure_jsp._jspService(render_005flayout_005fstructure_jsp:428)
   at org.apache.jasper.runtime.HttpJspBase.service(HttpJspBase.java:111)
   at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:733)
   at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:411)
   at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:473)
   at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:377)
   at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:733)
   at com.liferay.portal.osgi.web.servlet.jsp.compiler.internal.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:368)
   at com.liferay.portal.osgi.web.servlet.jsp.compiler.internal.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:380)
   at org.eclipse.equinox.http.servlet.internal.registration.EndpointRegistration.service(EndpointRegistration.java:153)
   at org.eclipse.equinox.http.servlet.internal.servlet.ResponseStateHandler.processRequest(ResponseStateHandler.java:62)
   at org.eclipse.equinox.http.servlet.internal.context.DispatchTargets.doDispatch(DispatchTargets.java:120)
   at org.eclipse.equinox.http.servlet.internal.servlet.RequestDispatcherAdaptor.include(RequestDispatcherAdaptor.java:48)
   at com.liferay.portal.servlet.DirectServletPathRegisterDispatcher.include(DirectServletPathRegisterDispatcher.java:67)
   at com.liferay.portal.servlet.DirectRequestDispatcherFactoryImpl$IndirectRequestDispatcher.include(DirectRequestDispatcherFactoryImpl.java:190)
   at com.liferay.portal.servlet.ClassLoaderRequestDispatcherWrapper.doDispatch(ClassLoaderRequestDispatcherWrapper.java:79)
   at com.liferay.portal.servlet.ClassLoaderRequestDispatcherWrapper.include(ClassLoaderRequestDispatcherWrapper.java:53)

The home page will display but you cannot use the sign in link or even navigate to the sign in page: It is all greyed out. I assumed I had improperly installed so I deleted the install. Downloadedf the bundle again: liferay-ce-portal-tomcat-7.3.5-ga6-20200930172312275.tar.gz Used 7zip to untar and then copy the installation folder. At that point I just started Tomcat up. Same error.

Two trys with same bundle downloads. Is there an issue here? Found a match on the error but it from WAY back: 7.0 Unlikely its an old regression.....