Server hangs during startup of 1.14.2_Pre-Release_3 or 1.14.2_Pre-Release_4, however, it starts up normally with 1.14.2_Pre-Release_2.

The crash is on a relatively old map with a long history of Minecraft version upgrades, chunk corruptions and so on in the past years, which might have lead to the problem.

Java process does not react on any signals, CPU usage is 0%, and only four files are open (which is where the spawn point is):

world/region/r.-1.0.mca
world/region/r.-1.-1.mca
world/poi/r.-1.0.mca
world/poi/r.-1.-1.mca

I've made a smaller copy of the world, truncating region and poi to the above files. The effect of 1.14.2_Pre-Release_4 hanging and 1.14.2_Pre-Release_2 not hanging persists.

Unfortunately, it is still above 10MB allowed for attachment. I'm uploading it as a RAR multi-part archive, hope it's OK.

UPD! Changed task description as it became clear that old Java version is to blame, while eraseCache is unrelated.