A DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM :
When using the linkoffline option in Javadoc, it still tries to contact the online source first and reports an error when this fails. It should be possible to suppress that error at least, or just not report it if the linkoffline source works. I note that the tool continued to generate the documentation with the correct links, so the error is unwarranted.

STEPS TO FOLLOW TO REPRODUCE THE PROBLEM :
Create a class that will link to an online resource outside of the project. An example is a Logger which uses slf4j.org. Add an entry in your local "hosts" file to make this inaccessible somehow. Add a package-list locally for the documentation and run javadoc with -linkoffline pointing to the folder containing this local list.

FREQUENCY :
ALWAYS