Friends unable to connect to my minecraft server

Noobgamer37

Distinguished
Nov 26, 2014
373
4
18,795
I have port forwarded correctly Ive made sure of that and Ive given them the external ip address. BUt for some reason they arent able to join. I have also turned on white list and tried that but that not working either. this is the text that pops up once I have started the server if thta helps.
[17:56:09] [Server thread/INFO]: Starting minecraft server version 1.11.2
[17:56:09] [Server thread/INFO]: Loading properties
[17:56:09] [Server thread/INFO]: Default game type: SURVIVAL
[17:56:09] [Server thread/INFO]: Generating keypair
[17:56:09] [Server thread/INFO]: Starting Minecraft server on *:25565
[17:56:09] [Server thread/INFO]: Using default channel type
[17:56:10] [Server thread/WARN]: Failed to load white-list:
java.lang.NullPointerException
at mx.g(SourceFile:144) ~[minecraft_server.1.11.2.jar:?]
at lg.C(SourceFile:123) [minecraft_server.1.11.2.jar:?]
at lg.<init>(SourceFile:30) [minecraft_server.1.11.2.jar:?]
at lh.j(SourceFile:186) [minecraft_server.1.11.2.jar:?]
at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.run(SourceFile:436) [minecraft_server.1.11.2.jar:?]
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source) [?:1.8.0_121]
[17:56:10] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing level "world"
[17:56:10] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing start region for level 0
[17:56:11] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 5%
[17:56:12] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 42%
[17:56:13] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 96%
[17:56:13] [Server thread/INFO]: Done (3.312s)! For help, type "help" or "?"