Chapter 8   Trouble Shooting


In the iPlanet Market Maker software itself, compared to other components of the installation, such as iPlanet Web Server, iPlanet Directory Server, and Oracle, there are fewer configurations that are necessary. The troubles, if at all, could be related to the slow response occasionally. Most or all of them have been addressed by the configuration settings and performance tuning. This section lists the problems encountered and the possible solutions. The elaborate answers to most of these problems can be found in the Chapter 4 "Installation and Configuration" and Chapter 6 "Performance Tuning and Monitoring".

It is important that you use the log files and debugging messages judiciously when trying to resolve issues within the iPlanet Market Maker installation.

• Web server crashes under load. What is the cause and what is the solution?

  Cause :

  JVM is running out of memory.

  Solution :

  Adjust the maximum heap size of the JVM in the web server. You can modify this in the file jvm12.conf under the iPlanet Web Server configuration directory.

• Before logging in for the first time, while hitting the Login page, Oracle JDBC exceptions are thrown.

  Cause :

  The iPlanet Market Maker is not connecting to the Oracle database properly.

  Solution :

  Check the settings for the Oracle database in the file VortexConfiguration.properties located in the directory, iMM/properties. You should look for the following keys :

     #CFG_DATABASE_DRIVER

     # - Specifies the JDBC driver file.

     1=oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver

     #CFG_DATABASE_URL

     # - Specifies the database connectivity URL

     #Type4 -- 2=jdbc:oracle:oci8:@vortex

     2=jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:vortex

     #CFG_DATABASE_USER

     # - Specifies the database user.

     *3=T8bQpW4AQTw=

     #CFG_DATABASE_PASSWORD

     # - Specifies the database password.

     *4=T8bQpW4AQTw=

  Make the appropriate adjustments to the settings for your configuration.

• Logging in takes very long.

  Cause :

  In the Display Profile of the user, the Inbox channel can be set to display the number of emails in the Shared Inbox on the portal page every time the user logs in. If this is set, the Shared Inbox should be cleaned regularly. If the Inbox is not cleaned regularly and if it holds a large number of emails, it could result in longer logging time.

  Solution :

  Delete the emails from the Inbox regularly or remove it as a channel from the users' display profile for the portal page.

• E-mail notifications are not sent out.

  Cause 1:

  Incorrect SMTP host setting in the file VortexConfiguration.properties file.

  Solution :

  Ensure that the SMTP host setting specified during installation in the file VortexConfiguration.properties is correctly specified.

• As the number of users logged in increases, beyond a point, new users are not able to log in. An Oracle exception is thrown.

  Cause 1:

  The Job Scheduler is not running.

  Solution :

  The Job Scheduler should be running for the e-mail notifications to be sent out. Ensure that it is up and running in its JVM.

  Cause 2:

  The database connection pool has reached the maximum limit and so is unable to create more connections for the users.

  Solution :

  Change the database connection pool maximum size by modifying the VortexConfiguration.properties in the file VortexConfiguration.properties located in the directory iMM/properties.

• Before logging in for the first time, while hitting the login page, LDAP exceptions are thrown.

  Cause :

  iPlanet Market Maker instance is not connecting to LDAP properly.

  Solution :

  Check the settings for LDAP in the file userxconfig.properties located in the directory iMM/properties/com/iplanet/ecommerce/userx. You should look for the following keys :

     ldaphost: localhost

     ldapport: 389

  Check the settings for the LDAP in the file VortexConfiguration.properties located in the directory iMM/properties. You should look for the following keys :

     #CFG_LDAP_READ_USER

     *10=f2zgvsFyajQORAFrsZXexKebDLWW3cAk

     #CFG_LDAP_READ_PASSWORD

     *11=iT2NSQTfIUM8zRefAD7VjQ==

     #CFG_LDAP_WRITE_USER

     *12=f2zgvsFyajQORAFrsZXexKebDLWW3cAk

     #CFG_LDAP_WRITE_PASSWORD

     *13=iT2NSQTfIUM8zRefAD7VjQ==

  Make the appropriate adjustments to the settings for your configuration.

• In a load-balanced environment, the page flow does not seem to correspond with the actions you follow.

  Cause :

  Resonate is not set up correctly to work with the iPlanet Market Maker software.

  Solution :

  Double check that you have correctly installed Resonate following the previous guidelines. Important aspects of the installation include:

  • Setting up the nodes that represent the iPlanet Market Maker servers that the load will be balanced on.

  • Configuring the VIP (virtual IP) to an IP address in the subnet that is not being used.

  • Configuring Resonate for HTTP load-balancing to balance among all the iPlanet Market Maker Servers on port 80.

  • Configuring Resonate for cookie persistence based on the name of the cookie being returned from the server.

  • Starting Resonate.

  • Configuring each iPlanet Web Server with the iPlanet Market Maker installation to have appropriate (and unique) cookie names for the session.

  • Restarting each iPlanet Web Server installation so that the cookie name settings take effect.

• Exceptionally long response times while users try to log in after deployment.

  Cause :

  • Missing indices in the LDAP settings.

  • The community size has exceeded the ALL_IDS_THRESHOLD setting.

  • LDAP connection pool is undersized.

  Solution :

  • Look for any notes=U entries in the LDAP access logs. These entries indicate that there could be a missing index in LDAP for a particular search attribute. For the notes=U entry, identify the attributes in the LDAP search filter and check the slapd.ldbm.conf file in LDAP config settings to see if there is any attribute on which the index has not been created.

  • If the community size exceeds the ALL_IDS_THRESHOLD setting, you can expect to see notes=U entries in the LDAP access logs with large etimes (elapsed times ). The only solution presently is to adjust the ALL_IDS_THRESHOLD upward.

  • Look for the sizing of the LDAP connection pool in the file iMM/properties//com/iplanet/userx/userxconfig.properties. The LDAP clients might be running out of free LDAP connections in the LDAP connection pool. Ensure that, on each iPlanet Market Maker host, the connection pool is set to have minimum and maximum settings of 150 and 300 respectively, which are fairly comfortable settings for expected loads.

• On invoking the gateway jsp file (imm.jsp by default) an error message "Display profile contained bad data" is thrown.

  Cause :

  • Display profile load didn't go through or was not done as a part of the install.

  • The Oracle database is not up or the iPlanet Market Maker hosts cannot connect to Oracle database due to improper settings in the VortexConfiguration.properties.

  • There was an attempt to reload community from scratch overwriting the previous community load without running the display profile load again.

  Solution :

  • Run the loadreal.sh script from the directory iMM/db/portal/db/real if this has not been done after the LDAP/Oracle loading with the installer.

  • Check to see if the Oracle instance is up and running and if the settings in the iPlanet Market Maker hosts to connect to Oracle database are made correctly.

  • If you are reloading community data, for any reason, overwriting the existing community data, ensure that the loadreal.sh is run again. This must be a reload from an ldif which ensures creation of new guids for all loaded users. This doesn't apply to restorations of community from backups because the guids from the backup are the same as the guids in the database.

• After stopping and restarting Oracle there are exceptions thrown from Oracle reads by the Job Scheduler.

  Cause/Solution :

  • The job Scheduler process needs to be stopped and restarted every time Oracle is shutdown and brought up again.

• The web page throws an Oracle Error Message: ORA-29861: domain index is marked LOADING/FAILED/UNUSABLE.

  Cause:

  • This is an Oracle interMedia index error on the column value of the table cat_attr, which means that interMedia index CAT_ATR_VALUE_TXT1 is in a state of loading. (Also, check Oracle error messages document)

  Solution:

  • The database administrator must drop the index with the force option and rebuild when you get this error

  • Issue the following commands to fix:

    Log into SQLPLUS as cat user.

    Issue "drop index CAT_ATR_VALUE_TXT1 FORCE;". You must use the force option.

    Recreate the index "create index CAT_ATR_VALUE_TXT1 on CAT_ATTR (VALUE) indextype is ctxsys.context;".

• Under high load conditions, the web server error log indicates that we have run out of available http sessions.

  Cause:

  • The maximum number of valid sessions allowed by default in iPlanet Web Server is 1000 and the inactive session time out on the server is 30 minutes. If more than 1000 users demand valid sessions from the same iPlanet Market Maker host in a total duration of 30 minutes, you might see the server return an internal server error with the status code of 500. The web server error log may indicate that you have run out of available sessions.

  Solution:

  • Change the maxSessions setting in the file <NS-HOME>/webserver-instance/config/context.properties to increase the number of maximum allowed valid sessions and / or reduce the session time-out on iPlanet Web Server.