java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class sun.print.CUPSPrinter

I get the following开发者_StackOverflow error when sending a job to a printer in Linux.

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class sun.print.CUPSPrinter

Don't know why the class cannot be found, as it's included in rt.jar and i've looked into my rt.jar and the class is there. For more information, my java -version shows

java version "1.6.0_24"

Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_24-b07)

Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 19.1-b02, mixed mode)

Thank you in advance

As noted in java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class XXX, the class is present, but is not initializing correctly.

In a comment, CodePainters points to this report https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=297910 which implies that $DISPLAY was not set or set correctly.