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DRAFT KB-XXXX Appian URL uses a database schema, server, or port different than what is defined in custom.properties

Symptoms

Symptom 1

- Login Page loads via https but static content does not load. Inspecting the page through a network capture reveals that static content response is coming from an undesired port.

Symptom 2

- Setting a Default Start Page on the 'User Start Pages' tab of the Admin Console yields the following error

      The URL is invalid or has an incorrect base URL. The base URL must be https://FQDN:<INCORRECT_PORT>

Symptom 3

- Logging in yields a 401 error when hitting suite/tempo

Symptom 4

JBOSS fails to start with errors that point to data sources that do not exist in custom.properties, appian-ds.xml, nor standalone.xml. 

Cause

A custom.properties file exists somewhere else on the server other than <APPIAN_HOME>/conf.

Apache commons-configuration PropertiesConfiguration will attempt to find a file specified by just the name with a call to ConfigurationUtils.locate() which resolves in the following order:

  1. directly from the URL
  2. base directory
  3. user's home directory (if it exists)
  4. classpath

<APPIAN_HOME>/conf/conf is on the classpath, so Appian expects to use the custom.properties file on setep 4. However, if a custom.properties file is found before step 4, Appian will use that file rather than the expected custom.propoerties file in <APPIAN_HOME>/conf. Hence, if stale versions of custom.properties exist in a user's home directory and this user attempts to start the Application Server, Appian willl pick-up the wrong file and the Application Server will fail to start.

Jboss could not start because the data sources defined in the custom.properties file in the user's home directory no longer existed in the ds.xml after updates were made to the ds.xml and the APPIAN_HOME custom.properties.

custom.properties with stale values in the user’s home directory. Jboss was overwriting the customer’s updates to the custom.properties in the APPIAN_HOME directory with these, so their expected changes were not taking affect.

Action

  1. Find and remove/rename any custom.properties files extraneous to the classpath
    1. Linux
      1.  Possibility to run grep at the user level to find all custom.properties files that exist on the server 
    2. Windows
      1. Possibility to use Windows File Explorer to search for all custom.properties files that exist on the server 

Affected Versions

  • This article applies to Appian 18.4 and earlier.

Tag Patty Phonemany and Gabe Hollies