By now I figured out that what I really want to do is having
one-to-many for user -> privilege, and a many-to-one for
privilege->user, pretty standard case I would assume, however I get
some really weird errors with this mapping file:

<hibernate-mapping>
 <class name="net.snyke.tmm.Privilege" table="privilege">
       <id name="id" column="id">
           <generator class="native"/>
       </id>
       <property name="read" column="isRead"/>
       <property name="write" column="isWrite"/>
       <many-to-one name="user" class="net.snyke.tmm.UserAccount"
column="user" not-null="true" />
       <many-to-one name="account"
class="net.snyke.tmm.FinancialAccount" column="account" not-null="true"
/>
   </class>
 <class name="net.snyke.tmm.UserAccount" table="users">
       <id name="id" column="id">
           <generator class="native"/>
       </id>
       <property name="name"/>
       <property name="password"/>
       <bag name="userPrivileges"
           inverse="true"
           lazy="false"
           cascade="all">
           <key column="user_privileges"/>
           <one-to-many class="net.snyke.tmm.Privilege"/>
       </bag>
    </class>
<class name="net.snyke.tmm.FinancialAccount" table="accounts">
       <id name="id" column="id">
           <generator class="native"/>
       </id>
   </class>
</hibernate-mapping>

namely this:

17:16:10,052  INFO Configuration:1286 - configuring from resource:
/hibernate.cfg.xml
17:16:10,052  INFO Configuration:1263 - Configuration resource:
/hibernate.cfg.xml
17:16:10,056  INFO Configuration:468 - Reading mappings from resource:
mapping.hbm.xml
17:16:10,144  INFO DriverManagerConnectionProvider:147 - cleaning up
connection pool: jdbc:mysql://localhost/test
17:16:10,153  INFO Mappings:137 - duplicate import:
net.snyke.tmm.Privilege->net.snyke.tmm.Privilege
17:16:10,153  INFO Mappings:137 - duplicate import:
net.snyke.tmm.Privilege->Privilege
17:16:10,154  INFO HbmBinder:265 - Mapping class:
net.snyke.tmm.Privilege -> privilege
%%%% Error Creating HibernateSessionFactory %%%%
org.hibernate.MappingException: Could not read mappings from resource:
mapping.hbm.xml
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.addResource(Configuration.java:484)
    at
org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.parseMappingElement(Configuration.java:1443)
    at
org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.parseSessionFactory(Configuration.java:1411)
    at
org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.doConfigure(Configuration.java:1392)
    at
org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.doConfigure(Configuration.java:1368)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.configure(Configuration.java:1288)
    at
net.snyke.tmm.persister.HibernateSessionFactory.initSessionFactory(HibernateSessionFactory.java:98)
    at
net.snyke.tmm.persister.HibernateSessionFactory.getInstance(HibernateSessionFactory.java:54)
    at
net.snyke.tmm.TestUserAccount.testPersistence(TestUserAccount.java:19)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at
sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
    at
sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:324)
    at junit.framework.TestCase.runTest(TestCase.java:154)
    at junit.framework.TestCase.runBare(TestCase.java:127)
    at junit.framework.TestResult$1.protect(TestResult.java:106)
    at junit.framework.TestResult.runProtected(TestResult.java:124)
    at junit.framework.TestResult.run(TestResult.java:109)
    at junit.framework.TestCase.run(TestCase.java:118)
    at junit.framework.TestSuite.runTest(TestSuite.java:208)
    at junit.framework.TestSuite.run(TestSuite.java:203)
    at
org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:478)
    at
org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.run(RemoteTestRunner.java:344)
    at
org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.main(RemoteTestRunner.java:196)
Caused by: org.hibernate.DuplicateMappingException: Duplicate
class/entity mapping net.snyke.tmm.Privilege
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Mappings.addClass(Mappings.java:117)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.HbmBinder.bindRoot(HbmBinder.java:110)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.add(Configuration.java:385)
    at
org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.addInputStream(Configuration.java:426)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.addResource(Configuration.java:481)
    ... 23 more

Any idea?

Hi. I followed this Thread and triied to give it a check.
I downloaded your code and ran it. I need to create a class BaseVO.java
as you didn't provide it. Here is what I put:

<BaseVO.java>
public class BaseVO {
    private int id = -1;
    private Privilege[] userPrivileges = null;

    public int getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public void setId(int i) {
        id = i;
    }

    public Privilege[] getUserPrivileges() {
        return userPrivileges;
    }

    public void setUserPrivileges(Privilege[] priv) {
        userPrivileges = priv;
    }
}
</BaseVO.java>

I am not sure the set/get on userPrivileges are in this class or not.
But Hibernate was complaining there was no setter/getter for
userPrivileges in UserAccount. I thought ot put it in BaseVo as it was
not in your original UserAccount.java

Anyway, after creating the DB in mysql, the only output I have is:

classic factory

I don't have any error message. So I guess you might have a different DB
than me. Here is my DB script:

<db_mysql>
CREATE TABLE accounts (
  id int(11) NOT NULL,
  `name` varchar(32) NOT NULL
);

CREATE TABLE privilege (
  id int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  isread tinyint(4) NOT NULL,
  iswrite tinyint(4) NOT NULL,
  `user` int(11) NOT NULL,
  account int(11) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (id)
);

CREATE TABLE users (
  id int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `name` varchar(32) NOT NULL,
  `password` varchar(32) NOT NULL,
  user_privileges int(11) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (id)
);

</db_mysql>

Note that MySQl (and many DBMS) have 'user', 'password' and 'name'
reserved (so MySQl encloses them with backquotes). Maybe that's what is
perturbing Hibernate. I am using hibernate 3.