KB-1825 Current User Activity is blank in the Admin Console with "Could not record user activity" warnings in the application server log

Symptoms

The Current User Activity tab in the Admin Console is blank. The following WARN message appears in the application server log:

WARN com.appiancorp.security.auth.activity.UserActivityFilter - Could not record user activity: secCtx=X, authDetails=AuthenticationDetails[ts=YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.MMM, entryPoint=PORTAL, clientIpAddress=XX.XX.XXX.XX, clientUserAgent=Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/69.0.3497.92 Safari/537.36] -- java.lang.NullPointerException

Cause

This issue can occur for the following reasons:

1. The search server is in a bad state.
2. The environment is using a version of Apache that is earlier than Apache 2.4, and the mod_jk connector version is earlier than 1.2.42.
3. The environment is using a version of the IIS isapi_redirect DLL that is earlier than 1.2.42.

Action

Ensure Search Server Is Running without Issues

1. Ensure that the search server is running. If the search server is not running, ensure that it is configured properly in the appian-topology.xml file(s) and start it according to the documentation.
2. If the search server is running, and the search-server.log file located at <APPIAN_HOME>/logs/search-server/ contains errors or warnings, follow the Action section of KB-1082 to clear the search server indices and restart the search server.

If Search Server Is Running without Issues...

Ensure that the web server is using the correct connector version. Please see the following details for Apache and IIS:

Apache

1. If the environment is using a version of Apache earlier than 2.4 and a mod_jk connector version earlier than 1.2.42, upgrade to the most recent version of Apache and the mod_jk connector.
2. If the environment is already using Apache 2.4 or later, but the mod_jk version is earlier than 1.2.42, install the latest version of the mod_jk connector and restart Apache.

IIS

1. If the environment is using a version of  the IIS isapi_redirect DLL that is earlier than 1.2.42, upgrade to the most recent version of the isapi_redirect DLL.
2. Restart IIS.

Workaround

The following workaround has been identified in the case that it is not possible to immediately upgrade to the latest version of Apache and mod_jk connector. There is no known workaround for IIS at this time.

1. Add the following lines to the bottom of the Apache httpd.conf file:

   SetEnvIf Server_Addr "(.*)" AJP_LOCAL_ADDR=$1

   JkEnvVar AJP_LOCAL_ADDR

2. Restart Apache.

Note: This workaround mimics the fix that is implicitly included in the mod_jk version 1.2.41. This workaround should not be a permanent solution, and the recommended course of action is to upgrade both Apache and the mod_jk to the most recent version (and remove this workaround from the httpd.conf file). Leaving this workaround as a long-term solution introduces potential risks if Apache were to change the behavior in that area of the connector in the future. This could expose the environment to problems on subsequent Tomcat versions that are distributed as part of Appian releases.

Affected Versions

This article applies to all versions of Appian.

Last Reviewed: December 2018