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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 an upgrade from Appian 18.2 and earlier to Appian 18.3 and later.

When starting up Tomcat for the first time, the following warning is logged in 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 the wrong encryption for the password section is used within the <APPIAN_HOME>/tomcat/apache-tomcat/tomcatResources.xml file.

Action

Use the Configure Script to encode the 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