2013-05-21 01:37:04,470 WARN  [org.rhq.enterprise.server.alert.AlertManagerBean] MasterServerPluginContainer is not started yet
2013-05-21 01:37:04,470 ERROR [org.rhq.enterprise.server.alert.AlertManagerBean] Failed to send all notifications for Alert[id=64380]
java.lang.NullPointerException
        at org.rhq.enterprise.server.alert.AlertManagerBean.sendAlertNotifications(AlertManagerBean.java:679)
        at org.rhq.enterprise.server.alert.AlertManagerBean.fireAlert(AlertManagerBean.java:646)
        at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor115.invoke(Unknown Source)
        at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
        at org.jboss.aop.joinpoint.MethodInvocation.invokeNext(MethodInvocation.java:112)
        at org.jboss.ejb3.interceptor.InvocationContextImpl.proceed(InvocationContextImpl.java:166)
        at org.rhq.enterprise.server.common.PerformanceMonitorInterceptor.monitorHibernatePerformance(PerformanceMonitorInterceptor.java:32)
        at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor88.invoke(Unknown Source)
        at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)



    public void sendAlertNotifications(Alert alert) {
        /*
         * make this method public in case we show the notification failure to the user in the UI in the future and want
         * to give them some way to explicitly try to re-send the notification for some client-side auditing purposes
         */
        try {
            if (log.isDebugEnabled()) {
                log.debug("Sending alert notifications for " + alert.toSimpleString() + "...");
            }
            List<AlertNotification> alertNotifications = alert.getAlertDefinition().getAlertNotifications();

            if (alertNotifications != null && alertNotifications.size() > 0) {
                AlertSenderPluginManager alertSenderPluginManager = getAlertPluginManager();

....

                        AlertSender<?> notificationSender = alertSenderPluginManager
                            .getAlertSenderForNotification(alertNotification);
                        if (notificationSender == null) {
                            notificationLog = new AlertNotificationLog(alert, senderName, ResultState.FAILURE,
                                "Failed to obtain a sender with given name");



getAlertPluginManager() can return null, causing trouble later on... At the very least this should be avoided. The plugin container should not try to send alerts when plugin manager is null.