Chinmayee Srivathsa's Weblog

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Stumblin' Along...

Wednesday Jan 09, 2008

This blog attempts to summarize what I've learned from forum postings and personal experiences as I try out various things with GlassFish 9.1.

Log files

A useful resource for troubleshooting your problems are the log files (there is a separate server.log file for each domain, node agent, and instance). For problems related to starting a domain, nodeagents, or instance see the server.log.

The location of the server.log file for domains, nodeagents, and instances:
- domain: <install-dir>/domains/<domain-name>/logs/server.log
- nodeagent:<install-dir>/nodeagents/<node-agent-name>/agent/logs/server.log
- instance: <install-dir>/nodeagents/<node-agent-name>/<instance-name>/logs/server.log

Thread Dumps

Another useful resource is the thread dump. With JDK 5, you have the very useful jps command. Run the jps command and look for PELaunch, which denotes a running app server process (node agents, domains, clusters, etc).

(prompt) jps 1261 Jps 1104 PELaunch
If you want to terminate unresponsive app server process use the kill -3 <PELaunch PID> command in Unix and sendsignal utility for Windows. For more info, see thread dumps.

Common Problems and Solutions

Problem	Solution
Cluster instances fail to start. `server.log` of the instance shows "connection refused" messages	1. Ensure that you followed the steps here and here: 2. If you're still having problems, edit your `/etc/hosts` file and ensure that your hostname maps to an absolute IP address and not to 127.0.0.1.
You cannot log on to the Admin Console of the DAS or a domain, although it appears that you have have started it.	1. Ensure that you are NOT using the deprecated `startserv` command. See the docs for instructions on how to start a domain. 2. Verify that your hostname is mapped to an absolute IP address. 3. Ensure that you do not have a firewall running. 4. There is a known issue and a workaround for Mac OS X systems. See this forum post.
Unable to start the domain.	1. If the error messages suggest that you do not have read-write access to the domain's folder, you probably installed the application server as a different user and you are trying to start the domain as a different user. Ensure that the user who installed the app server provides the app server user with read-write access to app server domain folders.
Although you have installed JDK 5, GlassFish reports that Java 2 SDK version 5.0 or above not found.	1. Ensure that you are running the correct version of `java` to unjar your files. Add `<jdk5_install_dir>/bin` to your `PATH` environment variable. Run `java -version` command to ensure that you are running the correct version. 2. Set `JAVA_HOME` to your `<jdk5_install_dir>`.
Load balancer (working fine earlier) does not work after restarting the cluster.	Ensure that you have created a health-checker for your cluster and load balancer. Use the `create-http-health-checker` command.
In-memory replication not working. Unable to make your web apps highly available.	Ensure that you have enabled/checked the Availability Enabled option while deploying your application. For step-by-step instructions (either using HADB or in-memory replication), see this.