Cannot start app server in 19.1

So i was able to resolve this with some help from appian. The issue currently is on Windows installation i have not tested this on Linux. As per Appian documentation jdk is now built into appian which is great but with that a few more environment variables needs to be defined.

1. JAVA_HOME this need to be <APPIAN_HOME>\java
2. JRE_HOME this need to be <APPIAN_HOME>\java\jre
3. CATALINA_HOME this needs to be <APPIAN_HOME>\tomcat\apache-tomcat
4. In the path variables add %CATALINA_HOME%\lib

If step 2 -4 are not carried out appian installation will run without any errors but appserver wont start and neither will tomcat as startup.bat is looking for Catalina_home environment variable. Starting 19.1 is different. After executing <APPIAN_HOME>\tomcat\apache-tomcat\bin\start-appserver.bat you also need to execute
<APPIAN_HOME>\tomcat\apache-tomcat\bin\startup.bat ( thanks appian for pointing this) this will execute the tomcat and catalina process.
While tomcat is running look for error " SEVERE [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDescriptor Error deploying configuration descriptor [C:\appian191\appian\tomcat\apache-tomcat\conf\Catalina\localhost\suite.xml]java.io.FileNotFoundException: ..\..\..\conf\tomcatResources.xml (The system cannot find the path specified)" or "Failed to start component [/suite]" this is due to suite.xml having incomplete information. Suite.XML can be found in <APPIAN_HOME>\tomcat\apache-tomcat\conf\Catalina\localhost\ . Here's what my initial suite.xml looked like

<!DOCTYPE config-xml [
<!ENTITY datasource-config SYSTEM "file:../../../conf/tomcatResources.xml">
]>
<Context docBase="${ae.home}/deployment/web.war" mapperDirectoryRedirectEnabled="true" swallowOutput="true">
<Loader
loaderClass="com.appiancorp.tomcat.loader.AppianWebappClassLoader"/>
<JarScanner>
<JarScanFilter
pluggabilitySkip="*"
tldSkip="*"
tldScan="${tomcat.util.scan.StandardJarScanFilter.jarsToScan},
string-*.jar,
kcServlet-*.jar,
taglibs-standard-impl-*.jar,
regexp-*.jar,
taglibs-standard-jstlel-*.jar,
sitemesh-*.jar,
jersey-server-*.jar,
pluto-taglib-*.jar,
i18n-*.jar,
datetime-*.jar,
struts-el-*.jar,
struts-taglib-*.jar,
struts-tiles-*.jar"
/>
</JarScanner>

<!-- Imported datasources from AE_HOME/conf/tomcatResources.xml -->
&datasource-config;

<!-- In order to start a local broker the property conf.jms.embeddedBrokerEnabled must be set to true in custom.properties -->
<Resource name="jms/AppianProcessIntegrationConnectionFactory"
type="org.apache.activemq.ActiveMQConnectionFactory"
auth="Container"
description="Appian Process Integration JMS Connection Factory"
factory="org.apache.activemq.jndi.JNDIReferenceFactory"
brokerURL="tcp://localhost:61616"
useEmbeddedBroker="true"
brokerName="AppianActiveMQBroker"/>

<Resource name="jms/AppianProcessIntegrationQueue"
type="org.apache.activemq.command.ActiveMQQueue"
factory="org.apache.activemq.jndi.JNDIReferenceFactory"
physicalName="APPIAN.PROCESS.INTEGRATION.QUEUE"
auth="Container"/>

<Resources cachingAllowed="false">
<PostResources base="${ae.home}/deployment/web.war/WEB-INF/resources" className="org.apache.catalina.webresources.DirResourceSet" webAppMount="/WEB-INF/classes" />
<PostResources base="${ae.home}/conf" className="org.apache.catalina.webresources.DirResourceSet" webAppMount="/WEB-INF/classes" />
</Resources>

<Manager pathname="" />

<!-- BEGIN ACCESSLOG -->
<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.ExtendedAccessLogValve" directory="${ae.home}/logs"
prefix="tomcat-access.log"
pattern="date time cs-uri x-P($bgUrl) sc-status time-taken"
conditionUnless="no-access-log" />
<!-- END ACCESSLOG -->

</Context>

My Modified suite.xml has datasource values:


<Context docBase="${ae.home}/deployment/web.war" mapperDirectoryRedirectEnabled="true" swallowOutput="true">
<Loader
loaderClass="com.appiancorp.tomcat.loader.AppianWebappClassLoader"/>
<JarScanner>
<JarScanFilter
pluggabilitySkip="*"
tldSkip="*"
tldScan="${tomcat.util.scan.StandardJarScanFilter.jarsToScan},
string-*.jar,
kcServlet-*.jar,
taglibs-standard-impl-*.jar,
regexp-*.jar,
taglibs-standard-jstlel-*.jar,
sitemesh-*.jar,
jersey-server-*.jar,
pluto-taglib-*.jar,
i18n-*.jar,
datetime-*.jar,
struts-el-*.jar,
struts-taglib-*.jar,
struts-tiles-*.jar"
/>
</JarScanner>

<!-- BEGIN DATASOURCES -->
<Resource name="jdbc/AppianDS"
factory="com.appiancorp.tomcat.datasource.EncodedPasswordDataSourceFactory"
type="javax.sql.DataSource"
driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
url="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/appian_schema?useOldAliasMetadataBehavior=true&amp;useUnicode=true&amp;characterEncoding=utf8"
username="xxxx"
password="xxxxxx"
initialSize="5"
maxTotal="100"
defaultTransactionIsolation="READ_COMMITTED"
maxWaitMillis="30000"
minIdle="5"
minEvictableIdleTimeMillis="90000"
timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="450000"
numTestsPerEvictionRun="100"
accessToUnderlyingConnectionAllowed="true"
validationQuery="SELECT 1"
testOnBorrow="true"
/>

<!-- END DATASOURCES -->

<!-- In order to start a local broker the property conf.jms.embeddedBrokerEnabled must be set to true in custom.properties -->
<Resource name="jms/AppianProcessIntegrationConnectionFactory"
type="org.apache.activemq.ActiveMQConnectionFactory"
auth="Container"
description="Appian Process Integration JMS Connection Factory"
factory="org.apache.activemq.jndi.JNDIReferenceFactory"
brokerURL="tcp://localhost:61616"
useEmbeddedBroker="true"
brokerName="AppianActiveMQBroker"/>

<Resource name="jms/AppianProcessIntegrationQueue"
type="org.apache.activemq.command.ActiveMQQueue"
factory="org.apache.activemq.jndi.JNDIReferenceFactory"
physicalName="APPIAN.PROCESS.INTEGRATION.QUEUE"
auth="Container"/>

<Resources cachingAllowed="false">
<PostResources base="${ae.home}/deployment/web.war/WEB-INF/resources" className="org.apache.catalina.webresources.DirResourceSet" webAppMount="/WEB-INF/classes" />
<PostResources base="${ae.home}/conf" className="org.apache.catalina.webresources.DirResourceSet" webAppMount="/WEB-INF/classes" />
</Resources>

<Manager pathname="" />

<!-- BEGIN ACCESSLOG -->
<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.ExtendedAccessLogValve" directory="${ae.home}/logs"
prefix="tomcat-access.log"
pattern="date time cs-uri x-P($bgUrl) sc-status time-taken" />
<!-- END ACCESSLOG -->

</Context>



Restarted the appian start process and it worked. This has only been seen on Appian Windows installation havent tested it on Linux yet.

Appian has confirmed it's a issue in 19.1 and will be addressed in the upcoming hotfix

above worked on linux, 19.1 hotfix A

thanks

matts401 can you confirm if tomcat-stdOut.log is generated automatically after applying hotfix A?

Yes, it is generating correctly for me

Hi Ankur, Thanks for sharing this helpful information.
I am facing another error while starting the app server when I check the log file the error stated as

java.sql.SQLException: Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: YES)

I have given root access to the uses in MySQL users but the error still remains, can you kindly tell me if you know how to solve this error?

Waiting for a response,

Thank you

Can you connect to the DB from workbench using the credentials you have set? If it works then check the suite.xml in APPIAN_HOME>\tomcat\apache-tomcat\conf\Catalina\localhost\ and validate if the password matches in the below code

BEGIN DATASOURCES -->
<Resource name="jdbc/AppianDS"
factory="com.appiancorp.tomcat.datasource.EncodedPasswordDataSourceFactory"
type="javax.sql.DataSource"
driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
url="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/appian_schema?useOldAliasMetadataBehavior=true&amp;useUnicode=true&amp;characterEncoding=utf8"
username="xxxx"
password="xxxxxx"

Hi Ankur,

Thank you for the reply,

I have provided the correct username and password in suite.xml file which I am using in the workbench to access the database, but I am still getting the same error.

can you kindly tell me which version of java connector are you using