Unexpected exception resolving reference error occurring after upgrading to Appian versions 18.3 and later

Symptoms

An issue with a bad key encryption occurs when starting Tomcat after performing an upgrade of Appian from a version which required the customer to install their own application server.

When starting up Tomcat for the first time the following warning is logged within the application server log:

WARNING [HOSTNAME-startStop-1] org.apache.naming.NamingContext.lookup Unexpected exception resolving reference
 javax.crypto.BadPaddingException: Given final block not properly padded. Such issues can arise if a bad key is used during decryption.

Cause

This occurs when using the wrong encryption for the password section within the <APPIAN_HOME>/tomcat/apache-tomcat/tomcatResources.xml file.

Action

Use the Configure Script to encode your data source password and use the output to fill in the password property in the <APPIAN_HOME>/tomcat/apache-tomcat/tomcatResources.xml file.

Affected Versions

This article applies to Appian 18.3 and later.

Last Reviewed: May 2019