KB-1694 Engine start up fails with Zookeeper "Address already in use" error

Symptoms

Engine start-up fails after running the start.sh|bat script. Although port 2181 is free, the following error is found in the zookeeper.log located in <APPIAN_HOME>/logs/service-manager/zookeeper/:

ERROR [main:ZooKeeperServerMain@66] - Unexpected exception, exiting abnormally
java.net.BindException: Address already in use

After running the start script located in the <APPIAN_HOME>/services/bin directory, the following error is observed in the command line prompt:

waiting for process QuorumPeerMain
waiting for process QuorumPeerMain
process QuorumPeerMain not running after 10000 seconds
Unable to start service QuorumPeerMain
java.util.concurrent.TimeoutException: Process QuorumPeerMain did not launch within 10000 ms

Users may also see the following output after running jps:

[user@server ~]$ jps
<PID> -- process information unavailable

Cause

There are two causes to this issue:

The Zookeeper ports (2181, 2888, and 3888) are either blocked or occupied by an orphan process.
The jps utility is not able to run due to invalid contents in the /tmp/hsperfdata_$APPIAN_USER folder (where $APPIAN_USER is the user running the Appian processes).

Action

Check the port availability with Administrator privileges.
Delete the /tmp/hsperfdata_$APPIAN_USER folder.

Affected Versions

This article applies to Appian 17.3 and later.

Last Reviewed: January 2020