Bad Key Encryption error occurs after upgrading to Appian versions 18.3 onwards

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.

Symptoms

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 due to using the wrong encryption for the password section within your <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 your <APPIAN_HOME>/tomcat/apache-tomcat/tomcatResources.xml file.

Affected Versions

This article applies to Appian 18.3 and later.