NPE on "return" bytecode of java.net.NetworkInterface

[David M. Lloyd]

I'm trying to work out something a colleague has observed during testing 
on an OpenJDK based on 1.8.0_111 (build 1.8.0_111-b16).

The business end of the stack trace looks like this:

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
         at java.net.NetworkInterface.<init>(NetworkInterface.java:80)
         at java.net.NetworkInterface.getAll(Native Method)
         at 
java.net.NetworkInterface.getNetworkInterfaces(NetworkInterface.java:343)

According to javap, line 80 corresponds exclusively to the "return" 
instruction of the constructor:

   java.net.NetworkInterface();
     Code:
        0: aload_0
        1: invokespecial #3                  // Method 
java/lang/Object."<init>":()V
        4: aload_0
        5: aconst_null
        6: putfield      #4                  // Field 
parent:Ljava/net/NetworkInterface;
        9: aload_0
       10: iconst_0
       11: putfield      #5                  // Field virtual:Z
       14: return
     LineNumberTable:
       line 79: 0
       line 50: 4
       line 51: 9
       line 80: 14

Since this method is called from a native method, is it possible that 
somehow the native method is generating an NPE, but the Java method is 
still in the stack context?  I assume that what is happening here is 
some kind of class init order snafu, but it's pretty tricky to diagnose 
exactly with this non-intuitive stack.

--
- DML