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DRAFT KB-XXXX Tomcat fails with "IllegalArgumentException"

Symptoms

Tomcat fails with the following error in <APPIAN_HOME>/logs/tomcat-stdOut.log:

WARNING [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.naming.NamingContext.lookup Unexpected exception resolving reference
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal base64 character 3a

Cause

The database password contains special characters. Special characters are not compatible with the encoding done using the configure script and decoding done by Tomcat upon starting the application server. When the encoded password is read from the suite.xml file, Tomcat will be unable to decode the encoded special characters and will fail to start.

Action

Ensure that you do not include special characters in your database password.

Affected Versions

This article applies to Appian 18.3 and later.

Last Reviewed: September 2018