Geoserver "Could not find a style for layer" error

Question

I have a bunch of layers stored in Geoserver. However, when I try to preview certain layers, a WMS exception gets thrown.

<ServiceExceptionReport version="1.1.1" >
    <ServiceException code="NoDefaultStyle">
        Could not find a style for layer wyoming:GoatHuntAreas2014, either none was specified or no default style is available for it
    </ServiceException>
</ServiceExceptionReport>

When trying to manage the layer, I click on the "Publishing" tab and I see the following error message (truncated).

Any ideas? How can I go back and set a "default style?"

org.apache.wicket.WicketRuntimeException: Exception in rendering component: [MarkupContainer [Component id = defaultStyle]]
at org.apache.wicket.Component.renderComponent(Component.java:2725)
at org.apache.wicket.MarkupContainer.onRender(MarkupContainer.java:1538)
at org.apache.wicket.Component.render(Component.java:2517)
at org.apache.wicket.MarkupContainer.renderNext(MarkupContainer.java:1440)
at org.apache.wicket.MarkupContainer.renderComponentTagBody(MarkupContainer.java:1603)
at org.apache.wicket.MarkupContainer.onComponentTagBody(MarkupContainer.java:1527)
at org.apache.wicket.Component.renderComponent(Component.java:2686)
at org.apache.wicket.MarkupContainer.onRender(MarkupContainer.java:1538)
at org.apache.wicket.Component.render(Component.java:2517)
at org.apache.wicket.MarkupContainer.renderNext(MarkupContainer.java:1440)
at org.apache.wicket.MarkupContainer.renderComponentTagBody(MarkupContainer.java:1603)

Answer 1

For anyone else who wants to know how to recover a layer when the default style is deleted and it breaks the entire layer and essentially the GeoServer GUI interface for that layer.

1) Create a new default style SLD file using the GeoServer GUI or through curl.

I ended up being able to create the new default style SLD file through the GUI. I called it GameUnits_Wyoming. If you can't do it through the GUI, try curl.

To do this with curl...

curl -u admin:password -XPOST -H 'Content-type: text/xml' -d '<style><name>GameUnits_Wyoming</name><filename>gameunits_wyoming.sld</filename></style>' http://localhost:8080/geoserver/rest/styles

curl -u admin:password -XPUT -H 'Content-type: application/vnd.ogc.sld+xml' -d @gameunits_wyoming.sld.sld http://localhost:8080/geoserver/rest/styles/GameUnits_Wyoming

2) Assign the new default style to the layer.

curl -u admin:password -XPUT -H 'Content-type: text/xml' -d '<layer><defaultStyle><name>GameUnits_Wyoming</name></defaultStyle></layer>' http://localhost:8080/geoserver/rest/layers/wyoming:GoatHuntAreas2014

Hopefully, someone else will find this useful.

Answer 2

It looks like you have deleted or renamed the style that was the default for those layers. The easiest way to fix this is to delete the layers affected and recreate them using your restore/load scripts.

Alternatively you can restore the whole data directory from your last backup.

If you don't have a backup or load scripts then look on this as learning opportunity and be more careful next time.