This was originally reported as CR 7000656 against OraclESolarisStudio IDE and
dbxtool. I can't trivially reproduce it ... so I'm hoping it rings a bell with you.

It has been observed with 1.6.0_18 and 1.6.0_20-ea on Solaris 10 SPARC (system "koshiba").
Basically the user does a paste into the NB-owned terminal-emulator and gets the following:

java.lang.NullPointerException: Failed to retrieve atom name.
    at sun.awt.X11.XlibWrapper.XGetAtomName(Native Method)
    at sun.awt.X11.XAtom.getName(XAtom.java:169)
    at sun.awt.X11.XDataTransferer.getTargetNameForAtom(XDataTransferer.java:123)
    at sun.awt.X11.XDataTransferer.getNativeForFormat(XDataTransferer.java:112)
    at sun.awt.datatransfer.DataTransferer.getFlavorsForFormats(DataTransferer.java:769)
    at sun.awt.datatransfer.ClipboardTransferable.<init>(ClipboardTransferable.java:72)
    at sun.awt.X11.XClipboard.getContents(XClipboard.java:84)
    at org.netbeans.lib.terminalemulator.Term.pasteHelp(Term.java:2183)
    at org.netbeans.lib.terminalemulator.Term.pasteFromSelection(Term.java:2223)
    at org.netbeans.lib.terminalemulator.Term$10.mouseClicked(Term.java:1938)
    at java.awt.AWTEventMulticaster.mouseClicked(AWTEventMulticaster.java:252)
    at java.awt.AWTEventMulticaster.mouseClicked(AWTEventMulticaster.java:252)
    at java.awt.Component.processMouseEvent(Component.java:6266)
    at javax.swing.JComponent.processMouseEvent(JComponent.java:3267)
    at java.awt.Component.processEvent(Component.java:6028)
    at java.awt.Container.processEvent(Container.java:2041)
    at java.awt.Component.dispatchEventImpl(Component.java:4630)
    at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Container.java:2099)
    at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Component.java:4460)
    at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.retargetMouseEvent(Container.java:4574)
    at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.processMouseEvent(Container.java:4247)
    at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.dispatchEvent(Container.java:4168)
    at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Container.java:2085)
    at java.awt.Window.dispatchEventImpl(Window.java:2478)
    at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Component.java:4460)
[catch] at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:599)
    at org.netbeans.core.TimableEventQueue.dispatchEvent(TimableEventQueue.java:137)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilters(EventDispatchThread.java:269)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(EventDispatchThread.java:184)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(EventDispatchThread.java:174)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:169)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:161)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:122)
This seems reproducible only under very odd cases where the clipboard source
is 'filemerge', an old motif application. (filemerge may be old
but it's still the preferred merging tool under solaris, even for mercurial :-)
You have to use it's Copy action and then paste with middle-mouse into
any Java app, not just the NB terminalemulator.
We've tried copying from old xview apps, dtpad, other motif apps and
they all paste satisfactorily.