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