I've seen other posts on this but without a resolution unless you use addCacheableFile which doesn't load hbm.xml files from jars. When I try to serialize my Configuration object I get a

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError with

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/jaxen/VariableContext
at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethods0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredMethods(Class.java:2427)
at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethod(Class.java:1935)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.getPrivateMethod(ObjectStreamClass.java:1382)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.access$1700(ObjectStreamClass.java:52)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass$2.run(ObjectStreamClass.java:438)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.<init>(ObjectStreamClass.java:413)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.lookup(ObjectStreamClass.java:310)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeObject0(ObjectOutputStream.java:1106)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.defaultWriteFields(ObjectOutputStream.java:1509)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.defaultWriteObject(ObjectOutputStream.java:416)
at org.dom4j.QName.writeObject(QName.java:239)
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.invokeWriteObject(ObjectStreamClass.java:945)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeSerialData(ObjectOutputStream.java:1461)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeOrdinaryObject(ObjectOutputStream.java:1392)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeObject0(ObjectOutputStream.java:1150)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.defaultWriteFields(ObjectOutputStream.java:1509)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeSerialData(ObjectOutputStream.java:1474)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeOrdinaryObject(ObjectOutputStream.java:1392)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeObject0(ObjectOutputStream.java:1150)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeObject(ObjectOutputStream.java:326)
at java.util.ArrayList.writeObject(ArrayList.java:570)
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor3.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.invokeWriteObject(ObjectStreamClass.java:945)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeSerialData(ObjectOutputStream.java:1461)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeOrdinaryObject(ObjectOutputStream.java:1392)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeObject0(ObjectOutputStream.java:1150)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.defaultWriteFields(ObjectOutputStream.java:1509)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeSerialData(ObjectOutputStream.java:1474)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeOrdinaryObject(ObjectOutputStream.java:1392)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeObject0(ObjectOutputStream.java:1150)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.defaultWriteFields(ObjectOutputStream.java:1509)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeSerialData(ObjectOutputStream.java:1474)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeOrdinaryObject(ObjectOutputStream.java:1392)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeObject0(ObjectOutputStream.java:1150)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeObject(ObjectOutputStream.java:326)
at java.util.ArrayList.writeObject(ArrayList.java:570)
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor3.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.invokeWriteObject(ObjectStreamClass.java:945)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeSerialData(ObjectOutputStream.java:1461)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeOrdinaryObject(ObjectOutputStream.java:1392)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeObject0(ObjectOutputStream.java:1150)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.defaultWriteFields(ObjectOutputStream.java:1509)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeSerialData(ObjectOutputStream.java:1474)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeOrdinaryObject(ObjectOutputStream.java:1392)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeObject0(ObjectOutputStream.java:1150)
at java.io.ObjectOutputStream.writeObject(ObjectOutputStream.java:326)

this is with hibernate-3.2.2.ga.jar

Well, the NoClassDefFoundError normally means that the class it is looking for is not in the classpath. So, I took the missing class name and put it into the jar finder service and the most likely looking jar file that you have missing is dom4j fron version 1.3 upwards.

However, looking inside the dom4j.jar file I see that the package structure is incorrect for the class file that you need (maybe jar finder service has it listed incorrectly). So I checked in jaxen-1.1.jar and it is in there.

Download the jaxen-1.1.jar file and add it to your lib folder. Hopefully that will work.